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A GIRTON GIRL 


BY / 

MRS. ANNIE EDWARDES 


NEW YORK : 

rOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER. 
1885. 


,ci-5 4 


TROW’S 

PRINTINQ AND LOOKBINOINQ COMPAW^ 
NEW YORK. 


A GIRTON GIUL. 


By Mrs. ANNIE EDWARDES. 

Author of “Archie Lovell,” “ Ought We to Visit Her?” Etc. 

CHAPTER I. 

TRIANGULAR FRIENDSHIP. 

‘‘The foundations of Newnham and of Girton may be 
deep,” observed Gaston Arbuthnot, in his pleasant, level, 
semi- American voice. “The foundations of the Gogmagog 
Hills are deeper ! Girl wranglers may come, girl optimists 
may go. The heart of woman remains unchanged. And the 
heart of woman — ” 

But a plate piled with luscious Guernsey strawberries hap- 
pening to be placed, by a jaunty Norman waitress, under 
Gaston’s nose, the generalization, for the moment, ended 
abruptly. 

Guernsey. Imagine that dot of granite washed round by 
such blue as our western Channel shows in June ; imagine 
carnation-smelling sunshine, a friendly trio of young persons 
breakfasting, with appetite, on the lime-shaded lawn of 
Miller’s Samian Hotel ; imagine the flutter of a muslin dress, 
the presence of a beautiful girl of tvvo-and-twenty, and the 
opening scene of this little drama lies before you. 

I may add that the friendship of the three persons was a 
paradox, as the reader of the succeeding pages shall be brought 
to see. 

“The heart of woman tends towards marriage. Well, a 
picturesque revival of Lady-Jane-Grey-ism,” went on Gaston 
Arbuthnot, as his plate of strawberries subsided, “may be safe 
enough — to the Lady Jane Greys ! Especially in an age when 
women, young or old, are by no means given to Ipsing their 
heads. But let the Roger Aschams who bear them company 
look to it ! This young person with whom you, Geoffrey, pro- 


6 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


pose to coach is probably neither worse nor better than her 
sisters. The man-hating story I flatly disbelieve. Marjorie 
Bartrand may or may not go to Girton. She is sure to prove 
herself a very woman in the end.” 

‘•Unfortunately, you flatly disbelieve so many things.” As 
she spoke, Gaston’s wife transferred a monster strawbeiTy 
from her own plate to her husband’s. “You told me, only 
yesterday — ” 

“ Dinah, my love,” interrupted Gaston, with good humor, 
“ never remind a man who has well dined or well breakfasted 
of what he said yesterday. In what state wercS' one’s nerves 
twenty-four hours ago ? Was the wind in the east ? Had our 
perennial duns arrived from England? Had our cousin 
Geoffrey been reading pauper statistics at us? Each or all of 
these accidents may have engendered skepticism which at this 
moment is replaced by the childlike faith born of idleness and 
a fine digestion.” 

And Dinah’s strawberry, encrusted by sugar, delicately dip- 
ped in Guernsey cream, was placed between Gaston’s white 
teeth, savored and swallowed. 

It was not part of Mr. Arbuthnot’s philosophy to refuse any 
little choice morsel that the world, artistic, intellectual, or 
physical, thought fit to offer him. 

He was a handsome man verging on his thirtieth year ; 
tawny-bearded, fair, with hands that Titian or Velasquez 
might have loved to paint, and a profile of the type commonly 
known as Bourbon. (Although he may not play the first part 
in this or any other drama, one has a feeling that Gaston 
should advance to the footlights, make his bow, a good minute 
before his fellow-actors leave the slips). His eyes were shrewd 
and near together, their color and their expression alike prone 
to shift if a stranger sought, too persistently, to investigate 
them. 

With a first look you felt sure that Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot 
bore a brain. You felt equally sure, with a second, that the 
opinion was shared, even to exaggeration, by Mr. Gaston 
Arbuthnot, himself. 

In dress, it was his pleasure to affect Bohemianism. On this 
particular June morning Gaston wore a brown velveteen coat, 
a spun-silk shirt, a white sombrero hat, the well-tailored man 
becoming only more conspicuous under the disguise. What 
smaller things shall be said of him ? That he had been brought 
up as a child in Paris, the only son of a valetudinarian Amer- 


TRIANGULAR FRIENDSHIP. 


7 


ican widow, and spoke French to this hour with a better 
accent than English, rolling his “ r’s ” and clipping his vowels 
like a born denizen of * the boulevards. Item : that he had a 
fair English girl for his wife ; item : a loyal, rough-hewn 
Scottish cousin for his friend — the Dinah and Geoffrey who, 
breakfasting with appetite although their discourse was of 
sentiment, made up the paradoxical little group under the 
lime-trees at which we have glanced. 

Let us turn to Geoffrey next, leaving Dinah, as I see they 
leave the first actress in the theatrical advertisements, for the 
bottom of the list. 

The cousinship of the Arbuthnots might be divined at a 
glance, although, reviewed feature by feature, the two men 
were notably unlike in their likeness. Both were tall, both 
were wiry of build, both held their heads high, going along 
life’s road as though the world, taken from whichever point of 
view you liked, were decidedly a place worth living in. Here 
the likeness ended. Gaston, indeed, would declare that by 
virtue of his mother’s Yankee blood, and his own Parisian in- 
stincts, they were less related, physically, than any ordinary 
cousin-germans. 

One overwhelming difference between them was patent. 
Geoffrey was no beauty-man ! When he was the freshest of 
freshmen, five or six years before the morning of this Guernsey 
breakfast, Geff went in, one November night, for a little bit 
of guerilla fighting in the Cambridge streets, which, without 
quenching the guerilla spirit, effectually left a beauty -spoiling 
brand upon himself for the remainder of his life. 

It happened thus. Geoffrey, raw from school, had newly 
carried off one of the scholarships best worth winning in the 
University. Although brave, manly, impetuous, the lad’s 
hours were early, his habits sober. He belonged, indeed, to a 
class which young gentlemen, fond of their pleasure, and of 
modest mental gifts, are apt to label during their first two 
terms of residence under the generic name of smug. Well, 
with an old schoolmate, less versed in Greek than himself, 
Geff had been drinking coffee and conning over such por- 
tions of Plato as would be wanted by his friend for the coming 
Little Go. He was midway on his way back to his scholar’s 
attic in John’s, when, turning sharply round a comer of Petty 
Cury, he found himself in the thick of a small but classic 
‘‘town and gown.” A brace of undergraduates, raw as him- 
self, held a mob of roughs at bay ; stones, oaths, and brickbats 


8 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


flew about with Homeric profusion. A fine Cambridge drizzle 
gave atmosphere to the scene. Police, bull-dogs, proctors, 
were beneath the horizon. 

With no other weapons than his fists and his Plato, Geff 
rushed to the fore. In those early days he had neither the 
weight nor the staying power which on many a well-contested 
football field have since made his name a terror to the foe and 
a tower of strength to All England. He had, however, the 
force born of will, of brain, of generous impulse. Ere twenty 
seconds had sped, Plato, wuth all the Platonic pliilosophy, 
went to the winds, and the biggest, brawniest of the roughs, 
stoutly gripped about the neck-cloth region, gave tokens of 
surrender. 

Unfortunately for Geff’s beauty his antagonist’s left hand 
held a broken stone bottle. As the ruffian felt liimself reel to 
earth, he swung the missile, with dastard might, into the 
Scotch lad’s face, cutting his nose and forehead very literally 
to the bone. There came a cry of “ Proctor ! ” There was a 
shuffling of departing feet. Then Geoffrey, blinded, stunned, 
fell into a bull-dog’s arms and heard the usual proctorial ques- 
tion as to name and college, addressed with the usual calm 
proctorial courtesy to himself. 

It was a week before the Little Go exams ; and Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot, as soon as the surgeons could strap his face into a 
grim resemblance of humanity, went down. 

The incident in nowise lessened his Cambridge reputation. 
Although he eventually came out eighth in the Classical 
Tripos, it is not known tliat the most foolish tongue called Ar- 
buthnot of John’s a smug, again ! Tacitly, he was recognized, 
even by pleasure-loving young gentlemen, as one of that queer 
“good-all-round sort” in whom the defects of bookishness 
and staid living are condoned by certain sterling natural 
virtues — glorious muscle, unconquerable pluck. “Virtues 
that a man can’t help, don’t you know, if they are born 
in him ! ” And which, confusing to the pleasure-loving intelli- 
gence though such facts may be, do certainly, in the long run, 
bring public credit to the Alma Mater. 

But the blow from his street antagonist had marred Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot’s looks for life. 

Strength, loyalty, and gentleness were written large upon his 
face. His dark, somewhat sunken eyes had in them the glow 
of an intellect high above the level of his handsome cousin ! 
His smile, though Geff did not resemble the family of Bour- 


TRIANGULAR FRIENDSHIP, 


bon, was finer, because sweeter, more wholly human than Gas- 
ton’s. But his looks were marred. That rugged cicatrice 
across nose and forehead could never wear out, and Geoffrey 
possessed not the thousand little drawing-room graces that, in 
some women's sight, might go far towards rendering such a 
blemish “interesting.” His hands, however firm, lithe, 
adequate for a surgeon’s work, did neither suggest Titian nor 
Velasquez to your mental eye. His dress bespoke the stu- 
dent. His French was grotesque. Although a second Bayard 
in his reverence for abstract Woman, he had no small atten- 
tions for concrete idle ladies. 

Garden j^arties Geoffrey Abuthnot evaded ; dancing parties 
he abhorred. In regard to matrimony he would shake his head, 
not holding it a state meet for all men. 

Concerning this latest clause, however, the reader shall 
learn more when we come to ask why the triangular friend- 
ship of the persons breakfasting together under the shadow of 
Mr. Miller’s limes was paradoxical. 

“Yes,” resumed Gaston Arbuthnot, tilting himself to the out- 
side limit of equilibrium on his garden chair, and clasping his 
arms with a gesture admirably suggestive of habitual laziness 
above his head, “look the position in the face for one moment, 
and you reduce it to an absurdity. No girl of seventeen has 
ever yet been a man-hater ; has she, Dinah ? ” 

“I was not,” admitted Mrs. Arbuthnot frankly, although 
she blushed. “ But Miss Bartrand of Tintajeux, young though 
she is, has gone through disappointment. Mrs. Miller told 
me so when I showed her the paper with the advertisement. 
Miss Bartrand, more than a year ago, was engaged to the 
major of some English regiment stationed in Guernsey.” 

“ Is that a disappointment, my love?” 

“ The major of the regiment proved a sorry character,” said 
Dinah gravely. Miss Bartrand found out that he had broken 
the heart of some poor girl at a former garrison town.” 

“And, from that hour forth, swore to look on all men as in 
the conspiracy,” interrupted Gaston. “What breadth of dis- 
crimination, what knowledge of the world these simple-seem- 
ing schoolgirls occasionally show ! ” 

“When I was eighteen, that spring I went to stay with 
Aunt Susan at Lesser Cheriton, I knew no more of the world’s 
ways than a baby, did I, Geff ?” 

“The philosophers are divided as to how much a baby 


10 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


does know,” answered Geoffrey, fixing his dark eyes with dis- 
crimination upon Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot’s face. 

‘‘There is an unexpected parry for you, my dear girl.’’ 
Shifting his chair away from the table, Dinah’s lord began t6 
fold himself a loose, or Spanish modelled cigarette. Pipes and 
cigars of ordinary goodness Gaston would no more smoke 
than he would swallow any of the popular fluids known among 
Britons as wine. He had the \drtue of facile temperance, ’^^’ore 
the blue ribbon of a fastidious taste. Unless his small luxuries 
were of the choicest, he could at any time All the anchorite’s 
role without effort. “You had better apply to your own law- 
ful husband, Dinah, than to Geff, when you want a compli- 
ment.” 

“ I apply to Geoffrey when I want truth.” 

Dinah made this answer, unconscious of the slight irony 
her speech conveyed. 

“The truth! When a pretty woman talks of truth,” cried 
Gaston, “ she means, ‘ give me the biggest, most sugared lump 
of praise that my moral gullet will enable me to swallow.’ ” 

Mrs. Arbuthnot had been married more than three years. 
Yet was she so much in love with Gaston still, as to color 
rosy red at the doubtful flattery of this remark. 

She was a blonde, amply framed Devonshire girl in the fresh 
summer of her youth. “ Not a lady,” according to the tradi- 
tions of small social courts, the judgments of smaller feminine 
tribunals. Dinah’s lips could scarcely unclose before ineradi- 
cable accents of the west country working folk informed you 
that Gaston Arbuthnot, like so many artists — poor dear im- 
pressionable fellows ! — had married beneath him ! Not a lady, 
as far as the enunciation of certain vowels, the absence of cer- 
tain petty artificialities of female manner were concerned, but 
with the purity of April dawn on her cheeks, the wholesome 
work-a-day qualities of along line of yeomen progenitors in her 
heart. 

About most women’s charms men are prone to hold contra- 
dictory opinions. What world-renowned beauty but has at 
times felt the cold breath of adverse criticism ! A smile from 
Dinah’s pensive mouth, a gleam from Dinah's serious eyes, ap- 
pealed to all beholders. Tottering old gentlemen would turn, 
with spectacles hastily adjusted, to wonder, fine ladies cast 
looks of despair after her from their carriages, young men of 
every sort and condition w^ould lose their peace, if Dinah did 
I but demurely w^alk along London pavement or provincial 


TRIANGULAR FRIENDSHIP. 


11 


street. She was an altogether unique specimen of our mixed 
and over-featured race: white and rose of complexion; chis- 
elled of profile, wuth English-colored hair (and this hair is 
neither gold nor flaxen nor chestnut, but a subdued blending 
of the three) ; eyebrows and eyelashes that matched ; a nobly 
cut throat ; and the slow, calm movements that belong in all 
countries to the fair, large Madonna-like women of her type. 

Madonna. The word in connection with poor Dinah must 
awaken instant visions of sock-knitting and of pinafore-mend- 
ing ! Gaston’s wife Avas, in truth, a very ideal of sweet and 
gracious motherhood. Gladly you would have imagined her, 
girt round by a swarm of toddlers, with eyes and cheeks like 
her own, to be bequeathed, a priceless heirloom, to future gen- 
erations. But Dinah had no living child. And round Dinah’s 
mouth might be discerned lines that should certainly not have 
found their way thither at two-and-twenty. And in Dinah’s 
low country voice there was a lilt at times of unexpected sad- 
ness. Round some corner of her path Dull Care, you felt, must 
lurk, stealthily watchful. At some point in the outward and 
visible sunshine of her married life there must be a blot of 
shadoAV. A AAmman like Dinah could be hit through her affec- 
tions only. Her affections Avere centered painfully, I had 
almost written morbidly, on one subject. And that subject 
vras Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, her husband. 

‘ ‘ If Miss Bartrand be a hater of men, a scorner of marriage, 
so much the easier prospect for me,” said Geoffrey. “ At the 
present time I look upon myself as an educational machine to 
be hired out at so much an hour. I have no more a mind to 
put on company manners for Miss Marjorie Bartrand than for 
any thick-headed fresher I was vainly endeavoring to get 
through Little Go.” 

“You? It depends, rather, on what Miss Marjorie Bartrand 
has a mind for,” observed Gaston Arbuthnot, Avith the certainty 
born of larger experience. 

‘ ‘ Happily, the wording of the advertisement shows that 
Miss Bartrand means work. We have it here.” 

Geoffrey looked down the columns of a small blue, badly 
printed local newspaper, half French, half English, that lay 
open on the breakfast table. 

“ ‘ Tutor wanted. I, Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux, need a coach to pre- 
pare me for Girton. Classics and mathematics. Six hours a week.— 
Apply, personally, at Tintajeux Manoir, after six P. M. An Oxford or Cam- 
bridge man preferred.’ ” 


12 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


Does any one know if Marjorie Bartrand is handsome?” 
exclaimed Gaston, with sudden animation. “Dinah, I adjure 
you to find out the truth in this matter. The women of the 
hotel would at least repeat the popular island beliefs. ‘ An 
Oxford or Cambridge man preferred.’ The crystalline artful- 
ness of the clause touches one, from a girl who makes pretence 
at misanthropy.” 

“But surely, Gaston, you would not ” 

“ I would do most things. My classics were unfairly judged 
of by my college "tutor. My mathematics,” Gaston confessed, 
with his air of unreliable fatuity, “ never existed. Still, I kept 
all my terms, except of course the hunting terms. And I suc- 
ceeded— as far as I went ! If I passed no exams, I was at least 
never spun. I am as much a Cambridge man as Geoffrey is. 
I feel more than disposed to apply to Miss Marjorie Bartrand 
myself.” 

The muscles about Dinah Arbuthnot’s delicately carved 
mouth trembled. 

“You would tire before the first lesson was over,” said Geff, 
watching Dinah, while he addressed Dinah’s husband. “You 
want my incentive, Gaston, filthy lucre. My terms as a coach 
in Guernsey are five shillings an hour. Five sixes are thirty. 
Yes, reading classics and mathematics with Miss Bartrand will 
just pay half my weekly hotel bill, supposing I am not lucky 
enough to get other work.” 

“ And you don’t care a straw whether Marjorie Bai-trand is 
pretty or plain ? My dear Geff, if ever fortune brings you to 
the stage, take the part of Joseph Surface, for my sake. It 
would suit you to admiration.” 

CHAPTER II. 

POKER TALK. 

Ere Geoffrey had had time to retaliate, a factor of no com- 
mon importance w^as destined to enter the difficult problem of 
Dinah Arbuthnot’s happiness. Holding the corner of her 
apron before her lips, the jaunty French waitress tripped up a 
pathway leading from the hotel to the lime-shaded lawn, and 
placed a lady’s card between Gaston’s hands. 

“Unedame. , . Mais, une petite dame qui demande Mon- 
sieur ! ” 

And the serving-woman’s eyes took in the whole space of 
blue mid-heaven at a glance. Obviously this Norman waitress. 


POKER TALK, 13 

with acumen derived from an older civilization than ours, was 
mistress of the situation. 

In a second of time Dinah had glanced over her hnsband’s 
shoulder. 

• ‘ Mrs. Thorne. Who is Mrs. Thorne ? What is that wu'itten 
in pencil? ‘ Nee Linda Constantia Smythe.’ Gaston, what is 
the meaning of Nee 

I am bound to add that Dinah pronounced the monosyllable 
as “ knee.” And a red spot showed on Gaston Arbuthnot’s 
cheek. 

From his precocious boyhood up, it had been a belief of Gas- 
ton’s that lady-killing was an open accomplishment, the 
established means of defence, as much an art to be learnt as 
the means of attack. And still at the sight of those poor pen- 
cil marks, at the thought of the youthful evenings when Linda 
Constantia used to hand him cups of weak tea, flavored atroci- 
ously with cinnamon, in the salon of a remembered Paris 
entresol, the conscience of the man was touched. 

As Dinah’s voice asked the meaning of the word “ knee,” he 
changed color. 

‘‘Linda Constantia Smythe. What an absurdly small world 
we inhabit ! You and I, my love, and Geoffrey, coming 
across poor Linda Constantia ! Faites entrer cettedame,” he 
added, turning to the waitress. “An absolutely forgotten 
acquaintance of a hundred years ago, Dinah — an acquaintance 
of times before I had heard your name. Linda married — no, 
did not marry, went out to India, a spinster, and returned, 
poor soul ! the wife of a Doctor Thorne. They say, in these 
Channel Islands, a man will run across every mortal he has 
known, or is fated to know, from his cradle to his grave.” 

“You never told me of your acquaintance with any Linda 
Constantia Smythe. I wonder you recollected her name so in- 
stantly, Gaston?” 

“ Easier, perhaps, to recollect the name than the lady. Can 
it be possible that this is she ? ” A cream-colored jDarasol, a 
great many yards of cream-colored cambric, were advancing 
with agitated flutter across the lawn. ‘ ‘ By Jupiter ! how these 
meagre women age when they once cross the line. Can this be 
the walk one has admired, I know not how oft ? Are those the 
shoulders ? My dear Mrs. Thorne,” — Gaston Arbuthnot rose to 
meet his visitor, thoroughly warm, thoroughly natural of 
manner ; and Dinah, with a sensation of insignificance only 
too familiar to her, sank into the background — “this is too 


14 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


kind! Doctor Thorne well, I hope? And your little daugh- 
ter? You see I have watched the first column of the Times, 
About your own health I need not ask. And so you have 
really given up India — have made a settlement in Guernsey 1 
Dinah, my love, let me introduce you to one of my very early 
Parisian friends. My wife — Mrs. Thorne.” 

Dinah bowed with the staid gravity that in her case, as in 
that of some other lowly-born people one has known, came 
so near to the self-possession of breeding. Mrs. Thorne was 
effusive. 

Gaston felt an honest artistic satisfaction in watching the 
contrast the two young women presented to each other 

Linda Thorne’s figure was lithe, straight, thin ; the sort of 
figure that ever lends itself kindly to the setting forth of such 
anatomical deformities as shall have received the last approv- 
ing seal of Parisian fashion. Her eight-buttoned long hands 
were pleasingly posed. She wore a great deal of frizzled 
darkish hair on a forehead that, but for this Cupid’s ambus- 
cade, might have been over-high. Traces of rich powder, at 
noon of a June day, were not absent from Mrs. Thorne’s 
India-bleached cheeks. Her eyes were big, black-lashed 
green. Her nose was fiat, giving somewhat the Egyptian 
Sphinx type to a personality that, with all its demerits, was 
by no means void either of allurement or distinction. 

If Linda had spoken perfect grammar, in a London tone, 
and with a taught manner, you would have set her down, 
perhaps, as an actress from one of our good theatres. Speak- 
ing as she did at utter grammatical random, with the slightest 
little bit of Irish accent, and no manner at all, imagination 
might suggest to you that Doctor Thorpe’s wife belonged to 
some lost tribe of nomad Lords or Honorables. And the sug- 
gestion would be correct. Linda’s grandfather was an Irish 
earl ; a hare-brained gentleman not unknown to the newspa- 
per editors of his day, but with whose deeds, good or evil, 
with whose forfeited acres, domestic relations, or jpolitical 
principles, our story has no concern. 

Linda grasped Mrs. Arbuthnot’s hands ; arawing her to- 
wards herself with such warmth that Dinah’s unsmiling face 
rose higher in air. She had an instinctive, a horrible dread 
that this old Parisian friend of Gaston’s, this lady of the green 
eyes, rice-powdered cheeks and effusive manner, might be 
going to embrace her. 

‘‘ A pleasure, and an immense surprise to meet like this? ” 


POKER TALK, 


15 


Mrs. Thorne took in with one long look the blooming fair- 
ness of the girl Gaston Arbnthnot had married, then drop- 
ping Dinah's hands, she turned coolly away. “ I heard of your 
arrival here, Mr. Arbuthnot, from Colonel de Gourmet.” 

‘‘Colonel de Gourmet is ” 

“ Our island authority in all matters of taste, from the dress- 
ing of a salad to the delivery of a sermon. He said you looked 
like a man who would understand the meaning of the word 
‘ dinner.’ That is the highest praise Colonel de Gourmet can 
give.” 

•‘ I appreciate the compliment immensely.” 

“You must appreciate the Colonel by meeting him at our 
house. Somehow, I fancied you were alone. I thought, 
stupidly, you had come to Guernsey for art reasons, and a-s a 
bachelor.” 

So her visit was deliberately not intended for the wife ; aft- 
er such a declaration, could not involve the necessity of the 
wife’s future acquaintance ! The keen blood quickened on 
Dinah’s cheek. Dinah’s husband was unmoved. Should it 
be counted as strength or as weakness, as fault or as virtue, 
that no small feminine by-thrust at his lowly-born wife ever 
shook the outward composure of Gaston Arbuthnot ? 

“ No, Dinah is with me. We are just starting on somewhat 
lengthy travels. We mean to spend the early summer here, 
Mrs. Thorne. In autumn we shall x'amble leisurely on to- 
wards the South of France, and in winter make a settlenipht 
of some kind in Florence, In Florence, greatly to my wife’s 
satisfaction, I am pledged to do serious work.” 

“ Yes ? And is it true, then, that you are a sculptor by pro- 
fession, that you have become an artist to the exclusion of 
other aims ? Of course there is a way of l(>oking at things 
which makes such a life seem the most cliarming possible.” 
Mrs. Thorne clasped her thin clever hands as though entering 
some mystei'ious general protest against art and its followers. 
“ And still, one has regrets. I was foolishly ambitious about 
you, if you remember, Mr. Arbuthnot. In our romantic boy- 
and-girl Paris days, I quite thought you were to get into Par- 
liament. To be the People’s friend. A kind of second Mira- 
beau. To make a tremendous name.” 

Gaston Arbuthnot’s face for a second betrayed sincere per- 
plexity. When was Linda Constantia ambitious in her hopes 
about his intellectual future V At what period of that shallow 
flirtation, a decade of j'ears ago, could dreams of a seat in the 


16 A GIRTON GIRL. 

House of Commons, and of Parliamentary victories, have been 
possible to her? 

“ I am open to flattery, Mrs. Thorne. When does a mediocre 
man not glory in the fine things, which, according to his 
friends, he might have done? Yet it seems to me I never held 
a political opinion in my life.” 

“You once held very strong ones. Why, in a letter you 
wrote me after — after we had said good-bye in Paris, you were 
so nobly warm, I remember, about the English lower classes ! 
Our sisters and brothers in the alleys, whose claims that dear, 
immortal Mrs. Browning so beautifully reveals to us.” 

Gaston Arbuthnot at this mention of a letter felt the ground 
grow sohd beneath his feet. 

“ I must have written to you from Cambridge ; for the mo- 
ment, perhaps, had taken up some of Geff’s fads. Let me in- 
troduce my cousin, by- the- bye. Geoffrey Arbuthnot — Mrs. 
Thorne.” 

Mrs. Thorne, who knew that in Geoffrey Arbuthnot she 
would never have a friend, smiled ambrosially. Geff rose. 
He gave the lady the lowest, at the same time the coldest bow 
in the world. It was a true case of elective dislike at first 
sight. 

“Yes,” went on Gaston, “ I remember.” He drew forward 
a garden-chair, into which Mrs. Thorne — no unpleasing picture 
in her broad Leghorn hat, her cambric morning gown, her 
eight-buttoned gloves, her cream-colored sunshade — sank 
gracefully. ‘ ‘ I liad taken up one of Geff’s fads. The British 
Workman was an epidemic among all classes of Cambridge 
undergraduates that term. Get hold of your poorer brother in 
his hour of sobriety — that is to say, on a Friday afternoon. 
Present him with a book-shelf of your own carving. Explain 
to him the newest thing out in draining-pipes. Show him how 
to make a window-box of rough cork, and present him with 
half-a-dozen slips of scarlet geranium. Humanize liim — 
always, of course, with the capital H. Humanize him ! ” 

“You call work so utterly noble as this ‘ a fad ’? I assure 
you, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, I am wild myself about the 
working classes. At this very moment I ought to be visiting 
among my district people.” 

Mrs. Thorne’s eyes offered Geoffrey a glance of tentative 
sympathy. 

“ Different men come to the same end by different roads,” 
said Gaston. “Your greatest English authority on culture 


POKER TALK. 


17 


declares that any man with a dash of genius is the born eleva- 
tor of others. I believe myself to have a dash — a thin streak 
rather — of genius. I believe myself to be a born elevator, but 
it must be in my own way.” 

‘ ‘ And that is ? ” asked Geoifrey. 

“ Well, remembering the atmosphere of Barnwell and Ches- 
terton, the scene of our early labors, one feels sure that the 
geraniums must have choked for want of air. Remembering 
the clay soil, the neighborhood of that oozy river, the thick 
air, the black ugliness,” Gaston shivered unaffectedly, “one is 
skeptical even as to draining-pipes. My opinion is that the 
English must be regenerated by art, by sculpture notably, 
owing to the low price of plaster casts. Sculpture can be best 
studied in Italy, and I am on my road thither. But Geff and 
I may still be fellow-laborers in the same cause.” 

Gaston rattled forth this specimen of “poker talk” lightly, 
his sombrero pulled low on his forehead, his shrewd, thought- 
reading eyes making observation the while of Linda — Linda 
whom, in long-dead Paris days, he just liked too well to be 
ever, for one moment, in love with. And the result of his 
study was that, in her Leghorn hat and cambric gown and 
slim eight-buttoned gloves, Linda Constantia Thorne looked 
undeniably picturesque. 

Each attitude that she took had, he saw, been diligently 
learnt by heart. It was Mrs. Thorne’s habit when in town to 
spend her nights at the Lyceum, learning gracefulness, from 
the stalls, at so much an hour. Her expression savored rather 
of earth than heaven. Her figure spoke of the Parisian de-* 
formity artist, not of nature. But these faults were just les 
defauts de ses qualites. Gaston could never think idiomatic- 
ally save in French. A well-paying section of the art of 188- 
required models of Linda Thorne’s type. And what artist, 
with pockets poorly lined, can resist the prospect of a good 
unpaid model ? 

If pure-faced Madonnas commanded the worship yielded to 
them of old, no need to go further than the exquisite brow and 
throat of his own Dinah. But pure-faced Madonnas in the 
nineteenth century are for the first-class sculptor. Gaston be- 
longed to the dilettante third-rate men who execute pretty 
conventionalities with readiness, get money for them from the 
dealers, and are stirred neither by great expectation of success 
nor by great disappointment in failure. 

In any case so decided the quick brain under the sombrero. 


m 


18 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


Linda Thorne, during half a summer liere in Guernsey, must 
be a resource, personally, against stagnation. She had ripened 
into a kind of sub-acid cleverness that pleased Mr. Gaston 
Arbuthnot’s taste. Her acquaintance opened out a not un- 
profitable means of spending one’s hours between work and 
dinner. On principle, he was in favor always of the brain 
woman, as opposed to the sentiment woman. He chose the 
white rose rather than the red — his only condition being that 
the white rose must wear Jouvin’s gloves, get her dresses from 
Paris, abjure patchouli, and be peremptorily certain that every 
inch of his, Gaston’s, heart belonged to the somewhat neglected 
girl, with Juno face and Devonshire accent, who waited for him 
at home 

Before sixty seconds were over he had resolved upon solicit- 
ing Linda Thorne to be his model. 

“And while Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot chisels marble for the 
English pauper in some delicious Florentine palace, you are 
thinking of Guernsey as an abiding-place?” 

Mrs. Thorne asked the question softly of Geoffrey. 

“ I ! Certainly not, madam. After a few weeks’ holiday I 
am going back to my medical work in Cambridge.” 

“Geoffrey won his academic honors long ago,” said Gaston, 
“ In my cousin Geff you behold that melancholy specimen, 
Mrs. Thorne — a man of genius resolutely bent on not getting 
on in the world. After passing eighth in the Classical Tripos 
of his year ” 

“And finding that a Classical Tripos does not mean bread 
and cheese,” put in Geff with sturdy independence. 

“ My cousin went back to school, set up a skeleton and be- 
gan smelling evil smells out of bottles, like a good little boy of 
sixteen. In another year and a half he hopes to get some 
unpaid work in the East End, London. The worse,” added 
Gaston, with the hearty appreciation of Geoffrey, which was 
the finest thing in his own character— ‘ ‘ the worse for all the 
wretched men and women in Cambridge whose lives are bet- 
tered by my cousin Geff’s labors among them.” 

♦‘Re — ally? Dear, dear, it is all too noble! A veritable 
life-poem in prose! My husband is a njan of science, too. 
Only in his days, you know, doctors believed in their own 
horrible medicines, Doctor Thorno will be charmed to make 
Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s acquaintance. You are not working 
quite too dreadfully hard here in Guernsey, I hope?” 

Geoffrey detested italics, even though he might tolerate a 


POKER TALK. 


19 


woman wlio habitually employed them. Judge how he was 
affected by the italicized enthusiasm, applied to himself, of 
Linda Thorne ! 

‘ ‘ My work in Guernsey will take the shape of pupils, if I 
am lucky enough to get any. My terms are five shillings an 
hour, madam. My tuition comprises Greek, Latin, arithmetic, 
a moderate quantity of algebra, and, if required,” said Geff 
without the ghost of a smile, “ the use of the globes. Perhaps 
you could recommenti me?” 

“Oh, to be sure; I quite understand.” Linda’s highly- 
wrought tones went through a diminuendo of interest, well 
bred but rapid, at this announcement of poverty. ‘ ‘ Classics ; 
the use of the globes ; algebra ; pupils.” 

“Of whom we hope we have caught one,” cried Gaston, 
watching her face, gauging the extent of her sympathy for 
life-poems in prose. “You think, do you not, Gelf, that you 
have secured Miss Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux ?” 

“I have already offered myself, in writing, and shall walk 
out to Tintajeux, on approval, this evening. If Miss Marjorie 
Bartrand thinks me capable of teaching her arithmetic, also 
the rudiments of Greek and Latin, at five shillings an hour, 
the bargin will be struck.” 

“Capable !” 

Tlie exclamation came from Dinah, wdio until now had 
maintained a staid but not ungracious silence while the others 
talked. A certain light in Dinah’s eyes betrayed the profound 
conviction of Geoffrey’s intellect that was felt by her. 

Mrs. Thorne looked, without showing she looked, at the 
three Arbuthnot’s in turn. 

“You think Mr. Geoffrey Ai’buthnot more than capable of 
guiding the whole combined feminine intellect of our poor 
little Guernsey. Do you not, Mrs. Arbuthnot ? ” 

Linda asked this with the North Pole voice that puts the 
social position of a feminine questioner at so vast a distance 
from the social position of her, questioned. 

“ I know nothing about intellect, except what I hear from 
Geoffrey and my husband. I am quite uneducated, myself.” 

Dinah’s reply was accompanied by a large level glance from 
those fearless, truthful Devonshire eyes of hers. And Mrs. 
Thorne’s eyes fell. 

Gaston Arbuthnot felt the heart within him rejoice. He 
would honestly have liked to accord a ‘ ‘ Bravo ! ” to his wife. 


20 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


‘‘A good many interpretations may be put upon the word 
‘ uneducated,’ ” observed Geoffrey. 

Mrs. Thorne had long known herself to be a clever woman. 
She felt that she was a cleverer woman than usual at this mo- 
ment. Yet not a suspicion had she of the situation’s actual 
point, not an inkling of the delicate friendship which bound 
Geoffrey to Dinah, and, at a somewhat lengthened distance, to 
Gaston. 

‘ ‘ Ah ! When you have stayed longer in our Robinson 

Crusoe little island And it is charming, is it not? ” 

Quite too deliciously charming,” answered Gaston, para- 
phrasing Linda’s own style of speech. ‘‘And cheaper than 
any decently liveable place, this side Italy. For the daily con- 
sideration of two five-franc pieces one gets such sunshine as 
cannot be bought in Great Britain, three excellently cooked 
meals, and the advantage of living under the same roof with 
members of the English aristocracy. You hear the domestic 
gossip, Dinah. Does not a dowager countess, with a German 
lady’s maid, a second husband, two pug dogs, and a wig, re- 
side in some upper apartment of Miller’s Hotel ? ” 

But you will find that we are a little behindhand. Doctor 
Thorne and myself are sensible that there is always the insular 
note. Our friends are most kind, most hospitable, and of 
course there are the military people to fall back ujDon. Still, 
remembering other days, the intimacies of the soul, the free- 
dom, the expansion of Indian society, Robbie and I feel we 
are in exile. There is a constant danger of fatty degeneration 
— I see Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot laughing at me — fatty degen- 
eration of the mind.” 

“ Want of appreciation is the saddest thing in human life,” 
murmured Gaston, with a serious face. ‘ ‘ I am taking my 
wife to Florence on the outside chance that we may be rec- 
ognized by the Florentines as persons of distinction. In Lon- 
don we are nowhere.” 

“Yes. There is the insular note. Now, these Bartrands of 
Tintajeux. Delightful people ! Noble French family who 
emigrated a hundred years ago to Guernsey — such of them, I 
mean, as were not guillotined — dropped the ‘ de ’ from before 
their name, and settled here. Well, it is very wicked to 
awaken prejudice, but ” 

“ Put aside all moral obligations,” exclaimed Gaston Arbuth- 
not. “ At a pass like this, dear Mrs. Thorne, it is a matter of 


POKER TALK. 21 

life or death to some of us to have facts. Is Marjorie Bar- 
trand pretty ?” 

With her long, gloved fingers Linda Thorne stroked down 
imaginary creases in her dress. 

“ Marjorie ought to be pretty. I am a frank adorer of 
beauty, you must know. I hate to see a girl with ]30ssibili- 
ties make the least of herself. So I always contrive to give 
Marjorie a friendly lecture. If she would only arrange her 
hair differently, as I tell her, and dress like other people, and 
take a little reasonable care of her complexion, she might be 
distinctly nice-looking. All to no purpose. Marjorie is Mar- 
jorie still. Some people call her an original. “ I,'’ said Linda 
playfully, ‘‘go further. I call her an aboriginal.” 

‘ ‘ I see her with my mind’s eye. Geoffrey, accept my con- 
dolences. All these classico-mathematical girls,” observed Gas- 
ton, ‘ ‘ are the same. Much nose, little hair, freckles, ankles. 
Let the conversation be changed.” 

Marjorie has too little rather than too much nose, and is 
certainly too dark for freckles. It seems, Mr. Gaston Arbuth- 
not, that you have grown cynical in these latter days. If I 
were a girl again I should be wild to become a pupil of Mr. 
Geoffrey’s — if he would have me. I should adore classics and 
mathematics, a touch of science even ! Positively, I think 
one ought to have a smattering of biology, just as one ought to 
attend the ambulance classes. But we may cultivate the 
Graces also. Now, Marjorie carries everything to extremes. 
Perhaps that is only another way of saying Marjorie is a Bar- 
trand.” 

“ And the Bartrands, you hinted, are as a race handsome ? ” 

Never was man surer of carrying his point, by oblique if 
not by direct means, than Gaston Arbuthnot. 

“Handsome, stiff-necked, unrelenting. I am not talking 
scandal against Queen Elizabeth, mind. If I said this in their 
presence, both Marjorie and her terrible grandfather would 
feel flattered. Something softer the child may perhaps have 
inherited from her Spanish mother.” 

(“ A Spanish mother I ” interpolated Gaston, in speculative 
parenthesis. “ Southern eyes flashing at you from the hand- 
some Bartrand face ? ”) 

“ But Marjorie has the true family temper. She knows too 
much. She ascribes the worst motives to everyone. She can- 
not forgive. About a twelvemonth ago, wdien the girl really 


22 


A OIRTON GIRL. 


ought to have been in the schoolroom, there was an unhappy 
little love story afloat in Guernsey.” 

‘‘ A lover who was unworthy of her, of course ? ” 

“ That sort of thing happens to many of us,” said Linda, ex- 
amining the stitching of her kerchief, ‘ ‘ and yet we women 
manage to forget our own wrongs and to tolerate humanity 
for the remainder of our lives. Marjorie, reckoning pounds, 
shillings and pence by our modest insular standard, is an 
heiress. Well, she despises the very name of man now, be- 
cause a certain rather unworthy Major Tredennis sought to 
marry her for her money.” 

“And intends to be revenged upon us from the awful 
heights of Plato and conic sections ! Geff , my boy, I don’t envy 
you as much as I did a quarter of an hour ago.” 

“Oh, Mr. Geoffrey will be frightfully snubbed. It is only 
right to prepare him beforehand.” 

Mrs. Thorne raised her eyes — very fine and sparkling eyes 
they looked just then — to Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s face. 

“ I shall like the sensation,” remarked Geff. “To the usual 
forms of feminine caprice one should be indifferent. Snubbing 
means sincerity.” 

“ If you tell her she has worked out a proposition in Euclid 
right she will resent it, think you are offering her an affront 
under the veil of compliment.” 

“ Then I will speak of the propositions, only, in which she 
fails.” 

“ If you admire the fiower she holds in her hand she wdll 
throw it away. If you say the sky is fair she will remark 
that, for her imrt, she thinks it looks like rain. Once or twice, ” 
said Linda, “ I have met Marjorie Bartrand, at some village 
treat, or fiower-show. The girl is not out, or likely to come 
out. She possesses one dress, I believe, the orthodox length of 
other people’s ! And each time I have pitied the unfortunate 
young men wflio tried to make themselves agreeable to her.” 

“ I am not an agreeable young man, Mrs. Thorne, either in 
fact or intention. Your warnings are kind, but I think even a 
Bartrand and an heiress will find it waste of time to snub me 
long.” 

As Geoffrey spoke, a side gate of the hotel garden opened. 
The figure of a spare, wooden-structured old gentleman dressed 
in white nankeen, and with a white umbrella outspread, 
walked in. 


POKER TALK. 


23 


“Why, there is Robbie! My dear good husband!” ex- 
claimed Mrs. Thorne impulsively. “ What in the world — ” 

“ Allait-il faire dans cette galere? ” 

The quotation was put in by Gaston in an innocent voice. 

Now Dinah’s French studies had in her youth been con- 
ducted for five terms, in a small and remote Devonshire 
boarding-school. Consequently she did not understand one 
word of the language as i)i’onounced by Gaston. Her heart 
sank as she watched an amused smile play round Linda’s 
mouth. Already ideas were exchanged between these two 
people — dear friends once — from which she must perforce re- 
main shut out. 

“ Doctor Tho — orne ! Doctor Tho — orne ! ” 

And with playful undulatory movements of her parasol, 
Mrs. Linda strove to arrest her husband’s attention. 

“Linda! Bless my heart, my love, I thought you were 
district-visiting hours ago. Quite an unexpected pleasure.” 

And, hat in hand, Doctor Thorne advanced up the path, 
dutifully obedient to his Linda’s call, to be introduced to 
Linda’s friends. 

He was an ultra Indian-looking, ultra curry-colored old 
Company’s servant, considerably more than thirty years his 
wife’s senior, with a snow-white military moustache, project- 
ing white eyebrows, mild, tired eyes, a very thick, gold chain, 
a puggaree, and buff shoes. You could never look at Doctor 
Thorne without a certain surprise that he did not live in Chel- 
tenham ; so well was his appearance in tune with your recol- 
lections of the Cheltenham Promenade winter garden, Mont- 
pellier lawn-tennis courts, and club windows blossoming over 
with generals, admirals, and old Indians. 

But in Cheltenham Linda might have hunted ! Quite early 
after their return to Europe Doctor Thorne made the discovery 
that he and his wife had two passions — Linda’s for horses, his 
own for living within his pension. This decided him on choos- 
ing an island for his residence. 

‘ ‘ Bless my heart, Linda ! A positively unexpected pleas- 
ure,” repeated the Doctor, with urbane little bows discreetly 
given to no person in particular. 

“ You dear delicious Robbie, to turn up just when you are 
so wanted ! ” cried Linda. “ Mrs. Arbuthnot, let me introduce 
my husband.” With a careless wave of the hand that said 
plainly enough, this part of the ceremony might be cut as 
short as possible. “Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Have I not often 


24 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


told you, Robbie, of my old friendship for Gast — , I mean, for 
Mr. Arbuthnot, in Paris ? Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, a medical 
student from Cambridge.” 

Doctor Thorne was one of the most thorough believers 
extant in this questioning, skeptical nineteenth-century world. 
He believed in his own drugs, practising, on a small but mur- 
derous scale, here in Guernsey, and holding the same pharma- 
copoeia! opinions that obtained half a century earlier in Cal- 
cutta. He believed in the great political names he had ad- 
mired when he was a schoolboy ; in the balance of power ; in 
the infallibility of Church, State, and the British Empire gen- 
erally. He believed in the extraordinary convenience of his 
house, in the fitness of his furniture, in the talents of his 
Linda. Doctor Thorne, I should add, had a mind — curiously 
small, thoroughly limited, but still a mind — not badly stored 
with facts, of a dry and statistical order, which he loved to 
impart to others. 

Fastening at once on Dinah — for Linda, moving a few 
paces distant, began to lionize the adjacent islands for Gaston’s 
benefit, and Geff contrived to vanish from the scene — fastening 
on poor Dinah for his victim. Doctor Thorne at once opened a 
conversation with the airy didactic grace in which old gentle- 
men would seem to have shone when the story-books of our 
infancy w^ere written. 

^‘Your first visit to the island, Mrs. Arbuthnot? Then I 
trust you and your worthy husband will accej^t my services 
as your cicerone. There is much here, I can assure you, to 
stimulate the interest and foster habits of observation. In the 
first place, you see, we have the people themselves, whose 
habits of frugality contrast in a marked and favorable manner 
Avith those of larger countries. You are not perhaps acquaint- 
ed with the statistics of savings-banks generally?” 

“ I have never had anything to save in my life, sir.” 

“Well, then, I can give you a few important facts. Sit 
down, pray. Let us protect our heads under shadoAv of this 
delightful ash, or lime, which is it? I can give you a few de- 
tails, with the amount actually saved by each person in this 
island over the age of fifteen. Studies of this kind captivate 
the softer faculty of benevolence, while the}^ strengthen and 
enlarge the understanding.” 

Dinah was well dowered by Nature with means of self- 
defence. She could put down an impertinence, I am afraid could 
resent an injury, as well as any fine London lady of them all. 


POKER TALK. 


25 


But in Dinah’s moral arsenal was no weapon for demolishing 
a mild little prosy gentleman of sixty-seven, with snow-white 
moustache, yellow shoes, and a tired smile. Some intuition 
she could not have analyzed made her almost feel a species of 
pity for Linda’s husband. 

We do not easily experience two distinct kinds of pain at one 
moment. It may be that Dinah’s heart was too sorely troubled 
for her to be sensible of boredom, even at the hands of such a 
master in the art of boring as the Doctor. 

“That morsel of table-land in the south is Sark,” observed 
Linda, pointing to an outline of haze faintly towering above 
the dense blue of the Channel. “And the streak nearer at 
hand — please don’t look at me, but at the islands — the streak 
nearer at hand, with the sun shining on its yellow patches, is 
Jetho ; and nearer still, where the pale green spaces mark the 
shallows, is Herm. I hope you are following my stage direc- 
tions, Mr. Arbuthnot.” 

Mr. Arbuthnot was scrutinizing her face; curiously, as one 
scrutinizes any waif or stray from the past, suddenly brought 
back to one; but tenderly too. When does a man of Gaston’s 
character feel aught but kindness towards the woman whose 
life has been a little embittered by his own fascination ? 

The kindness made itself felt in his voice and look when he 
answered her: 

“Almost the last time you and I saw each other we followed 
stage directions, side by side. Have you forgotten thor^i New 
Year charades of Madame Benjamin’s? ” 

“I have forgotten nothing,” exclaimed Mrs. Thorne, with a 
sharpish accent. “I have remembered you, Mr. Arbuthnot; 
I have thought of you, hoped for your happiness all these 
years. Now, at length, I am called upon to witness it.” 

She gave a glance at Dinah, patiently enduring the Doctor’s 
statistics, then went on with a sort of effort: 

“You must let me congratulate you. I am blunt, matter-of- 
fact — just as I used to be.” Certainly Linda Thorne was at 
no pains to modulate her voice. “Mrs. Arbuthnot is simply 
beautiful. Those matchless lines of profile ! Those soft waves 
of gold above her brow ! ” 

“You like that way she has with her curls? I am answera- 
ble for it. It took exactly fifteen months to convince Dinah 
that a woman may wear short hair upon her forehead, yet 
save her soul alive.” 


26 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


‘‘And the lips, the chin ! I believe Mrs. Arbuthnot’s face is 
the first I have ever seen without a fiaw.” 

Linda spoke as one might speak of a shell cameo, of a china 
vase, of a lily modelled in wax. 

Gaston Arbuthnot mentally translated the chill distinct tone, 
with edification to himself. 

“Dinah’s is a nature laid on large lines. She is the best pos- 
sible wife for such a light-ballasted man as I.” He made this 
confession of faith with genuine earnestness, feeling rather 
than acknowledging he felt, that the speech set his conscience 
satisfactorily at rest. “Goodness matters a great deal more, 
does it not, Mrs. Thorne, than a beautiful face ? ” 

‘ ‘ Possibly. I am ready to accept what you say. Tell me, 
only, you are not offended by my outsjx)ken admiration,” she 
went on. “ Surely I may presume sufficiently on old — old ac- 
quaintance, to congratulate you on your marriage, on the do- 
mestic sunshine of your life? ” 

“ It is delightful to feel that your heart is warm as ever ! 
As a matter of priority, congratulations, Mrs. Thorne, were 
due to you first. Dinah and I have been married j ust three 
years and a half, while you ” 

“Oh, it makes me too old a woman to be precise about 
dates,” said Linda, looking away from him. “ My daughter, 
although she retains her ayah and her spoilt Indian ways, is a 
big girl, almost four years old. I hope you will visit The 
Bungalow soon for Rahnee’s sake.” 

“ The Bungalow being ” 

“The straggling, white, one-storied place which you see low 
down under the hill to the right. That is my home, built 
entirely from Doctor Thorne’s own plans. The ugliest house, 
every honest person who sees it admits, in Guernsey.” 

“ Not in its interior. I am certain a house inhabited by you 
could not be ugly.” 

‘ ‘ Prettily said. Why, pray, in the present aesthetic age, cut 
off as we are from the poetic upholstery of London, should a 
house inhabited by me not be a great deal uglier than other 
people’s?” 

“ I decline, at this hour of the morning, to be logical. One 
has an instinct in such things.” 

“ Rahnee, at least, is not ugly. I am not afraid of your 
judgment on our little Rahnee. Now, what is to-day ? ” 

Gaston Arbuthnot believed it to be the fourteenth day of 
June, in the year of grace 188 — . 


POKER TALK. 


27 


Well, then” — Mrs. Thorne’s voice sank so as to be only- 
half a tone higher than a whisper — “ will you dine with us this 
evening, at seven? I believe,” added Linda vaguely, “that 
one or two of the Artillery officers may be coming to us. W^e 
do not entertain. I make a i^oint of telling everybody that. 
Doctor Thorne and I do not entertain. But if our friends care 
to drop in unexpectedly, to eat our roast mutton wdth us, and 
smoke a cigarette with Robbie afterwards, there we are. ” 

It was to be a bachelor party, then. Dinah might possibly 
have been invited to eat roast mutton at Mrs. Thorne’s table. 
She could, under no circumstances, be asked to smoke a 
cigarette with Robbie afterwards. But Gaston accepted with 
frank cordiality. During the years of his married life it had so 
grown to be a matter of course that Dinah, dear good girl ! 
should never go into the world, that even the form of hesita- 
tion at leaving her had been dropped on the part of Dinah’s 
husband. 

“No dress coat, no white tie, please. In these long June 
evenings one likes to stroll away as far from bricks and mortar 
as possible. There will not be a moon to-night. Still, even in 
the darkness, it will be enjoyable to breathe pure air, and 
watch the light upon the Caskets from the jetty yonder.” 

“And what do you think of my old friend?” Gaston 
Arbuthnot asked his wife when the Thornes had departed on 
their different roads, the Doctor to visit a patient in Miller’s 
Hotel ; Linda, her dress, a ca viler might say, scarce fitted to 
the work, to her poor dear brothers and sisters in the alleys. 
“ I have listened to Linda Thorne’s verdict on you. Now for 
the reverse of the medal. What do you think of Linda 
Thorne ? ” 

“ I think her vulgar.” 

It was the first time Gaston had heard judgment so harsh 
from Dinah’s lips. Hers was the least condemnatory of human 
souls. She shrank with a rare modesty from giving opinions 
on the people with whom Gaston associated, was openly un- 
ashamed, always, of her own lowly origin, and of her inability 
to discern the finer shades of a society to which she was not 
born. 

A slight tinge of red kindled on Arbuthnot’s cheek. “ Vul- 
ger is a strong w^ord. Women are not always generous in 
their strictures upon each other. Yet it happened that Mrs. 
Thome was singularly generous in her criticism of you. Linda 


28 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


thinks you beautiful, my dear. She said yours Avas the first 
face she has ever seen without a flaw.” 

Standing close beside me as you did, Mrs. Thorne Avould 
have shown delicacy by not talking of me at all. Although I 
tried not to listen, I heard too well what she said. It was 
those flatteries of Mrs. Thorne’s, for of course I am no judge of 
manner, which made me think her Amlgar. A lady at heart 
would have known how you must wince on hearing me so 
coarsely praised.” 

For one moment Gaston Arbuthnot’s looks were threatening, 
then the cloud passed. 

“I believe you are half right, my dear girl,” he observed, in 
his sunniest voice, and picking up his Avife’s hat from the spot 
where it had fallen at her feet. “But people of the Avorld are 
not as transparently truthful as you, my Dinah. You shoot 
at the bull’s eye, when you do discharge an arroAv, and seldom 
miss the mark. Now, let me tie your hat strings ! Lift your 
chin — so ! Let us wander off to the sea and forget aU the 
insincerities, all the Linda Thornes in existence.” 

The speech must liaA’-e been uttered with some of the airy, 
mental reservation that Gaston Arbuthnot’s habit of “ poker 
talk ” made easy to him. He did not for one instant forget 
that he was engaged to dine that evening at The Bungalow ; 
engaged, although there Avas no moon, to enjoy pure air and 
watch the light upon the Caskets fromthe jetty yonder. 

CHAPTER HI. 

HAS HE A wife! 

“ The battle is to the strong, Marjorie Bartrand ; the race to 
the swift. Women have been fatally handicapped since the 
world began. And Nature understands her own intentions, 
depend upon it, better than we do.” 

“Does Nature intend one half of the human race to be 
ciphers ? ” 

‘ ‘ Nature intends men to have Avives. There is no escaping 
that fact. When I Avas a girl Ave got quite as much education 
♦ as society required of us.” 

“ Society ! ” 

“ W'e learned modern languages, French and Italian, for of 
course German was not in vogue, and I must say I think 
Italian much the more feminine accomplishment.” 

“That is paying an exceedingly liigh compliment to Ger- 
man, ma’am ! ” 


HAS HE A WIFE! 


29 


“And we studied English literature, solidly, not out of 
little green-backed handbooks. Never a day passed that 1 did 
not read Addison, or some other fine Queen Anne writer, 
aloud to my father. And we knew how to write a letter. 
And we colored from nature, for the love of the thing, 
exceedingly well, some of us, thougli there was no South 
Kensington, and we never called ourselves art students, and, 
and — Marjorie Bartrand, how did this conversation begin ? ” 

‘‘ Apropos of Spain, did it not V” 

“ To be sure. Apropos of your Girton scheme, your wish to 
see classics and mathematics pushed into a country where 
women are still content to be women, and very womanly 
ones. University teaching for girls is a freak that will die out 
of itself, like coal-scuttle bonnets, bishops’ sleeves, crinoline, 
or any other mode that is at once cumbersome and unbeauti- 
ful.” 

Afternoon sunshine was fiooding the weather-beaten lich- 
ened walls of Tmtajeux Manoir. The Atlantic glittered, one 
vast field of diamonds, until it melted into pallid sky along 
the southern horizon line. The keen, cool ocean saltness 
mingled with and almost overbalanced the fragrance of the 
pinks, lieliotropes and roses in the Reverend Andros Bar- 
trand’s old-fashioned borders. On a garden bench, at some 
short distance from the house, were seated two ladies, fresh 
of face, both ; countrified of dress ; fast friends, although 
more than forty years stood between their ages. A cedar of 
Lebanon spread wide its layers of odorous darkness above 
their heads. A grass plot, emerald green, close shorn, was 
their carpet. 

‘‘If your wits were your fortune, child, such ambitions 
might be pardonable.” So, after a space, the enemy of pro- 
gress resumed her parable. “In families where the olive 
branches are in excess of the exchequer, the governess. Heav- 
en help her, is expected to ‘ ground ’ the boys, as they call it, 
in Latin grammar and Euclid. But with your grandfather’s 
position, your own inheritance, putting the idea of your mar- 
riage aside ” 

“ As you know I have put it, for ever and ever ! ” cried Mar- 
jorie Bartrand, her whole face seeming abruptly transformed 
into a pair of passionate eyes. “Did we not decide long ago. 

Miss Tighe, that the word mar , the word I detest so 

heartily, should never be spoken between us? Allow that I 
may not be forced, for money, to ground small boys in Latin 


80 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


grammar. Allow that my visions of raising Spanish girls 
above the level of dolls are as laughable as you all seem to find 
them. May I not want to bring myself, Marjorie Bartrand, 
up to the highest improveable point as a human being ! Great 
in mathematics I shall never be.” 

“ I am thankful, indeed, to hear you say so,” remarked Miss 
Tighe, with an air of relief. 

“ But even the Seigneur is forced to confess I might become 
— a fourth-rate classic ! I know Frencli and Spanish, Dog- 
berry wise, by nature. That must help me a long way on the 
road to Latin. And I have learnt seventeen irregular Greek 
verbs — I’m not sure about the aorists — and Mademoiselle le 
Patourel and I went straight through the Apology of Plato, 
with Bohn’s crib.” 

“ Poor Sophie le Patourel I You have outgrown her, at last, 
as you outgrew all your previous dozen or more governesses.” 

“I don’t know about ‘ outgrown.’ Grandpapa ridiculed our 
attempting Greek, from the first. You know the cruel way 
we Bartrands have of ridiculing under cover of a compliment ! 
Well, one day last week. Mademoiselle le Patourel was read- 
ing the text of Plato aloud, not very flowingly, poor good 
soul ” 

“ Sophie le Patourel had better have kept to the millinery ! 
Her mother made up a cap like no other woman in this 
island.” 

‘ ‘ And looking round she saw the Seigneur, outside the win- 
d,ow, with a wicked smile about that handsome old mouth of 
his, as he listened. Grandpapa made her the prettiest speech 
in the world about her quantities, her fine classic tastes, and 
her pupil. And Mademoiselle le Patourel never gave me 
another lesson ? ” 

“ So now your scheme is to prepare for Gii’ton by yourself. 
Ambitious, on my word ! ” 

‘‘ My scheme,” said Marjorie, lowering her voice and glanc- 
ing over her shoulder to make sure her terrible grandfather, 
Andros Bartrand, was not within earshot — “ my scheme is to 
have a real University coach of my own. A Cambridge B. A. 
at the present time residing in Guernsey.” 

Cassandra Tighe started up from her seat. 

She was a spare, tall, conspicuous spinster with a face all 
features, a figure all angles, a manner all energy. Her hair 
was bleached, as much by exposure to weather as by actual 


HAS HE A WIFE! 31 

age. Her complexion was that of a frosted apple. Her dress 
cost her fifteen pounds a year ! 

Living alone wfith one woman-servant in a small Guernsey 
cottage, it may be affirmed that Miss Tighe made as much of 
her life as any gentlewoman of modest income, and more than 
sixty summers, in the British dominions. Her intellectual re- 
sources were many. She was a thorough, an inborn natural- 
ist. She played the harp, and with no dilettante touch, but as 
ladies early in the Victorian reign were wont to play that in- 
strument. She drew. On stormy evenings, when she knew 
her voice could not penetrate the cottage window shutters, 
Cassandra confessed that she sang, such songs as “ I see Them 
on their winding Way,” “The Captive Knight,” or “ Zuieika.” 

Her popularity and her influence were widespread. The fig- 
ure of Miss Tighe, in her red fishing cloak, with nets, hooks, 
jars, boxes, bottles, overflowing from her village cart, was 
familiar throughout every nook and corner of the island. 
If she had not had the sunniest of human hearts you might 
have been tempted to dub her a gossip. That good old Eng- 
ish word, however, is associated in these days with a more 
than doubtful spice of malice. And men and women who 
had known Cassandra Tighe for thirty years averred that they 
had never heard an unkindly judgment from her lips. She 
was simply a raeonteuse — we lack the English equivalent — a 
sympathizer in all the vivid varying doings that constitute 
the lives of young and wholesomely happy people; a chronic- 
ler of news; a delighter in love affairs. 

Simply this. And yet, not unfrequently, Cassandra Tighe 
made mischief. Truthful, as far as conscious veracity went, 
to a fault, this excellent lady’s memory was in a chronic state 
of jumble ; so stored, it may be with polysyllabic names of 
plants, grubs and fishes that subsidiary human details had to 
be packed in, pell-mell, and take their chance of coming out 
again untwisted. And depend upon it, these tangled well- 
meaners, not your deliberate villains, are the cause of half the 
loves marred, the heartburnings, the jealousies, that make up 
the actual dramas, the unwritten three-volume novels of this 
work-a-day world ! 

“You are going to study with a tutor, Marjorie Bartrand ! 
With a Cambridge B. A. ! With a man ! What does ^our 
grandfather say ? ” 

“ I have not told him the news, Miss Tighe. I grudge giv- 
ing the Seigneur such intense pleasure. ‘ If 5 "ou insist on 


32 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


learning Latin and Greek.’ grandpapa has always said, * learn 
them decently. Send these trashy governesses to the winds. 
Be taught by a competent master.’ Yes,” cried Marjorie, 
bringing down a very small hand with very great energy on her 
knee, ‘ ‘ I grudge grandpapa his triumph, but the truth must 
be told. Now that I have caught him, I shall begin coaching 
wdth my B. A., my Cantab, forthwith.” 

Cassandra shook her head, mournfully incredulous. She 
was of an age and of a disposition to which revolutionary 
ideas do not come with ease. There was really no place in her 
mental fabric for the picture of Marjorie Bartrand, here, inside 
the sacred walls of Tintajeux, reading classics and mathemat- 
ics with a University coach. 

“ I think it more than likely the plan will fall through. 
We have no Cambridge tutors in the island unless, indeed, you 
mean good old Mr. Wink worth from the High Street 
Academy ? ” 

“ I mean no one belonging to Guernsey. I meant a person 
who — ah, Miss Tighe,” the girl broke off, “ I see that I must 
make full confession. No knowing, as grandpapa says, when 
you once begin to speak the truth, where the truth may land 
you. My B. A. is coming to arrange about terms and hours 
this evening.” 

“And how did he — how did any stranger man hear of 
you ? ” 

“ I put an advertisement in the Chroniqiie Guemseiaise, 
three days ago.” 

“Without consulting the Seigneur! Child — you did this 
thing? You gave your name, unknown to your grandfather, 
to the public newspaper ? ” 

“ I gave my name in the public newspaper, ma’am, and this 
afternoon I got an answer to my advertisement. Wait one 
second and you shall hear it.” 

Marjorie drew a note from the breast of her frock, and with 
an air half of mystery, half of triumph, began to read aloud : 

“ ‘ Miller’s Hotel, Tuesday, June 14th. 

“‘Geoffrey Arbuthnot, B. A. Cantab., is willing to read classics and 
mathematics with Miss Bartrand. Terms, five shillings an hour. Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot will call at Tintajeux Manoir, on approval, between the hours of 
seven and eight this evening.’ ” 

“Arbuthnot? Why, this is fatality.” Cassandra discerned 
a special providence, an inchoate stroke of destiny in most 
things. “ I vras looking in at Miller’s Hotel last night.' That 


HAS HE A WIFE! 


33 


reasonless creature, Mrs. Miller, has one of her throats again, 
and I did so want her to take some of my globules, but in 
vain. The ignorance of uneducated people — ” 

“And you saw my coach of the future,’’ interrupted Mar- 
jorie, knowing that when Miss Tighe got into such engrossing 
interests as throats and globules, she must be brought back to 
her subject with a run. 

“Yes, I saw Mr. Arbuthnot. A rough diamond, my dear, 
to speak truth.” 

“ That is so much in his favor,” said Marjorie, peeling, slired 
from shred, the petals of a carnation that she held between her 
fingers. “ I want to do my work for Girton steadily, unvexed 
by the sight or thought of that most irritating of God’s crea- 
tures — a beauty-man.” 

Cassandra looked hard at the girl ; remembering days, per- 
haps, when a beauty-man, in the fullest sense of the con- 
temptuous epithet, had scathed rather than softened Marjorie 
Bartrand’s heart. 

“Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, on the score of ugliness, will meet 
your wishes, my dear. A rough-hewn Scotchman of the 
Carlyle stamp. A man who looks as though he ought to do 
big things in the world. A man with a scar — got, I am told, 
in a Quixotic pavement fight — traversing lus forehead.” 

“ I like the sketch. Proceed.” 

“As regards Geoffrey Arbuthnot himself, I have done. 
Walking at his side, the evening light falling on her uncovered 
head and fair face, was the loveliest sight these old eyes have 
beheld for many a year — Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s wife. ” 

“ Geoffrey Arbuthnot — has he a wife ?” cried Marjorie in an 
altered voice. “My Cambridge B.A. — married! I hope you 
are sure of your facts. Miss Tighe. You know that sometimes 
— rarely, of course — mistakes occur in our little bits of Samian 
intelligence. You are perfectly certain that Mr. Geoffrey Ar- 
buthnot is a married man ? ” 

“ I have seen his wife. How can you ask me if I am cer- 
tain? ‘A daughter of the gods,’” Cassandra quoted, 
“‘divinely tali,’ fair-skinned, large-eyed, with a look of re- 
pressed sadness about her mouth that makes her bloom and 
youth the more noticeable. I was sitting in poor Mrs. Miller’s 
parlor, endeavoring to argue the woman out of taking Doctor 
Thorne’s drugs. As a human creature, a father, a husband, I 
have not one word to say against Doctor Thorne — ” 

“ I have ! ” exclaimed Marjorie Bartrand imperatively. 


34 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


‘‘Asa human creature, a father, a husband, most especially 
as a husband, I have everything imaginable to say against 
Doctor Thorne.” 

“ As a physician, I consider him a manslaughterer. Yes,” 
repeated Cassandra with pious warmth, “a manslaughterer. 
Indeed, if I had sat at the inquest on more than one of Doctor 
Thorne’s departed patients, Heave^i.^^rcnows what verdict I 
should not have returned against him.” 

“But your story. Miss Tighe? The man lik-i^-^'Carlyle ; the 
beautiful wife. Return, please, to the Arbuthnots.” 

“ Well, just as I was trying to imt reason into Mrs. Miller’s 
weak mind, I was startled by the sight I told you of. This 
lovely young woman went past the window, not two yards 
from where I sat.” 

“ With her husband. Was she leaning on Mr. Arbuthnot’s 
arm?” asked Marjorie. “ Did they look as if they had ever 
had a quarrel? Was she in white — bridal looking? Did you 
hear them murmur to each other ? Miss Tighe, be dramatic ! 
At Tintajeux we have not the joy, remember, of eventful liv- 
ing,” 

“ Mrs. Arbuthnot was dressed in black. Her hair lay in 
short blonde waves on her forehead. She wore not a flower, 
not an ornament, about her person. As they passed the win- 
now her husband remarked that he considered the roast duck 
and peas of which they had partaken for dinner were excel- 
lent.” 

“ So much,” said Majorie, affecting cynicism, “ for a chap- 
ter of married romance.’’ 

“ Ah, that has been. The key of our common life is C major 
— roast duck and green peas — whatever accidental sharps and 
flats Ave may deviate into, occasionally. The romance has 
been. I was overcome by the young woman’s singular 
beauty,” went on Cassandra. “I asked her name, and was 
rewarded by hearing such an accormt of them as warmed my 
heart. The girl belonged to the humblest class of life — a gar- 
dener’s daughter, or something of the kind ; and Arbuthnot, 
while he was still an undergraduate at Cambridge, married 
her.” 

‘ ‘ Geoffrey Arbuthnot ? ” 

Marjorie repeated the name softly ; a question in her tone, 
rather than in her words. 

“ Geoffrey, I presume ; that is to say, most decidedly, and 
beyond question, Geoffrey,” answered Cassandra, with the 


HAS HE A WIFE! 


35 


fatal certitude of inaccuracy. ‘ I am the more positive be- 
cause I felt a kind of love at first sight for these two young 
people, and made Mrs. Miller give me details. A party of 
Cambridge men were staying in the hotel when first the Ar- 
buthnot’s arrived ; and some of these men knew the husband 
by sight. He is looked upon as rather eccentric among his 
followers. I am afra>- Marjoi’ie, wlienever a man lead# a 
nobler life than other people the tendency of the day is to call 
him eccenti’ And Geoffrey Arbi. th. lot’s life must be very 
noble.” 

“ Because he had the courage of his opinions in choosing a 
wife ? ” 

“Not that only ; Arbuthnot is a student still at the Cam- . 
bridge medical school, and gives such time as he has over from 
study to the most miserable people in the Cambridge streets. 
Not proseljdizing, not preaching — (for my part, I don’t believe 
much in a preaching young man),” said old Cassandra, wliose 
opinions tended towards the broad ; ‘ ‘ simply binding up their 
wounds as men and women. Doing the Master’s work, not 
talking about it.” 

“ And his beautiful wife helps him!” exclaimed Marjorie, 
her sensitive Southern face aglow, “Ah, Miss Tighe, thank 
you again and again for your visit and for telling me this 
news. In my foolish, trivial, wasted existence what a splendid 
bit of good fortune that I should have the chance of knowing 
two such people ! ” 

Cassandra Tighe looked a little uncomfortable. She prided 
herself on her freedom from the prejudices of her sex ; within 
limits, really did startle her friends, sometimes, by the free 
exercise of private judgment. But the liberality of a white- 
haired lady, whose sixty years of life have run in the safest, 
narrowest, conventional trammels, may differ widely from the 
liberality of a hot head, an eager, self-forgetting young heart 
like Marjorie Bartrand’s. 

“ It will be a fine thing for your Girton prospects, capital 
for your Greek and Latin, to read with Mr. Arbuthnot. But I 
gathered — you must take this as I mean it, Marjorie Bartrand ; 
you hav^e no mother to tell j^ou things — I gathered from differ- 
erent small hints that Mrs. Arbuthnot is not exactly in society. 
That she is good and sweet and honest,” said Cassandra, “ you 
have only to look in her face to know ; still, if I were in Mar- 
jorie Bartrand’s jfiace, I should wait to see what the island 
ladies did in the matter of calling.” 


36 


A OIRTON GIRL. 


Marjorie paled round the liiDS — sign infallible, throughout 
the Bartrand race, of rising tempest. Cassandra, knowing the 
family storm-signals, prepared to take a hasty departure.” 

“ I forget time always under the Tintajeux cedars. And 
there is plenty for me to do at home. To-morrow, Annette 
and I are off for Sark for five days’ shore- work. Our talk 
about your new tutor has been an interesting one.” 

“ Especially the clause that prohibits my calling on the new 
tutor’s wife ! ” 

“ There is no prohibition at all. The Seigneur might safely 
leave his card on Mr. Arbuthiiot. It would be a very pretty 
piece of condescension, and of course a gentleman calling upon 
a gentleman can lead to nothing,” added Cassandra, rather 
ignobly temporizing. 

“ Exactly. Thank you very much, Miss Tighe, for your ad- 
vice. As you say, I have no mother to enlighten me as to the 
dark mysteries of calling or not calling. And as I consider the 
island ladies too frisky for pioneers ” 

“ Marjorie ! Our archdeaconess, our irreproachable Guern- 
sey matrons, f risky ! ” 

‘ ‘ I shall just have to act for myself. As Mrs. Arbuthnot, 
you tell me, has all good qualities w^ritten on her face, and 
knowing the fine things we do know of her husband’s life, it 
must be a credit to any w^oman — above all, to an archdeacon- 
ess — to make their acquaintance. 

“ Still, if she is unused ” 

“ Oh, I shall not put myself forward. If their merit is un- 
recognized, if narrow-minded, irreproachable people hold back 
from calling on them, I can understand that there may be 
shyness on my tutor’s part in mentioning his wife. I shall 
simply bide his time. I shall be silent until he chooses, him- 
self, to speak to me of Mrs. Arbuthnot.” 

“That wdll be wise. Treat him, honest gentleman, as 
though one had not heard of his marriage. Meantime, we can 
find out if our leading ladies, Madame Corbie especially, intend 
to notice her ” 

“ But, in my own self, I honor Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,” in- 
terrupted Marjorie, her face coloring like a rose at sunset. “I 
admire, honor, love him ! I wish the world were full of such 
men. I hold out both hands, in fellowship, to him at this 
moment.” 

Cassandra, for once, showed prescience ^vorthy c f her name. 
Cassandra argued no more. 


A TRINITY BALL, 


37 


CHAPTER lY. 

A TRINITY BALL. 

Geoffrey Arbuthnot was a man of whom none could say 
that Fortune liad been to him a too fond mistress. 

As a four-foot high boy, with shrewd observant Scottish 
eyes, with a Scottish mind already beginning to hold its own 
ideas as to the universe, lie was sent, through the reluctant 
generosity of an uncle, to a London public school. In those 
days sanitary and social reforms for overtaxed city school-boys 
were still inchoate. Each boy must look after himself, make 
personal acquaintance with facts, with the cut and thrust of 
human circumstance, take his recreation of the London pave- 
ments, sink or swim as he listed. 

Geoffrey Arbuthnot, before he was ten, had made ac- 
quaintance with a great many facts, all hard ones. He had 
no pocket money, no tips. His holidays had to be paid for out 
of the same reluctant uncle’s purse — father and mother sleep- 
ing in a Perthshire kirkyard ere Geff could well remember 
aught — and were enjoyed under the roof of such persons as 
endure homeless school-boys on systems of rigid economy, as a 
business. 

Hard-working to excess, perhaps because in work he found 
a friend, pushed into dead-language grooves because the mas- 
ters sought to keep up the dead-language reputation of the 
school, Geoffrey Arbuthnot awoke one morning at the age of 
seventeen a fine classic. He was sent up to compete for a 
^ Cambridge scholarship, won it, and, true to tradition, began 
reading, his heart warmed by the unwonted feeling of success, 
for his Classical Tripos. 

Considering that every aptitude he possessed lay in an op- 
posite direction to classical study, one can scarcely look on the 
nine Cambridge terms that followed as fortunate. The square 
man did his best to fill the round hole faithfully, his own 
squareness decreased not. And then, in tlie midst of this 
Greek and Latin epoch, came his love affairs — I retract the 
plural : his one overwhelming passion, ardent, pure as was 
ever love feic by man for woman : a passion which paled, ere 
he could well grasp it, into shadow, and which still— yes, in 
the Guernsey sunshine of this June day — rendered his happi- 


38 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


ness paradoxical, just at tlie age when liappiness should be 
fullest, most complete. 

Geoffrey Arbuthnot had not been smiled on by fortune. 
Nevertheless, he possessed gifts which for the simple hourly 
manufacture of human contentment are better wortli than the 
bigger favors of the gods. Life interested him. If he had had 
few artificial pleasures, he had exhausted no pleasures at all. 
In regard of nature, his sensations were vivid as a child’s. 
Walking forth to Tintajeux Manoir at an hour when the crisp 
blue and gold of afternoon had reached decline, Geoffrey felt 
youth run in his veins like wine. The hay and clover smells 
from the newly-cut fields ; the “ kiss sweet ! kiss sweet ! ” of the 
thrushes ; the verdured hedges touched still by Spring’s im- 
maturity, though the flower of the May was past ; the peeps 
at every turn of purple salt water ; the road-side ferns through 
which knee-deep he waded ; the yellowing honeysuckle sj)rays 
which brushed his face ; the streamlets slipping seaward away, 
through channels thick with cresses and forget-me-nots ; aye, 
even the whiffs of wood-smoke from the farmhouse chimnies, 
the incomprehensible Froissart French in which he heard the 
haymakers chattering to each other over their bread and cider, 
• — ail the low, melodious notes of this homely landscape affected 
him with a physical and keen delight. 

His life, since remotest baby-days, when he walked holding 
his mother's hand in hi y the, fair Scotland, had been passed 
among streets and among the human creatures who inhabit 
them. The pleasure of the Bethnal Green arab who, at six 
years old, first handles a living daisy differs, in degree only, 
from Geoffrey’s as he trudged along through these Guernsey 
lanes, his mind vaguely fixed on Tintajeux Manoir and on the 
chill reception from his future pupil which there awaited him. 

Would Miss Bartrand’s thunder glances be discharged frcm 
black eyes or blue ones ? Geoffrey had reached a stretch of 
undulating rushy common at the extreme western ]3oint of the 
island when this question presented itself. Ahead was a vista 
of mouldering banks, gay in their shroud of blue-flowered, 
ivy-leaved camj)anula, and with here and there a jutting tip of 
granite, crimson by reason of its glittering mica in the sunset. 
Above hovered a falcon, almost lost to view against the largely 
vaulted, bountifully-colored evening sky. 

Interpreting Froissart French by such lights as he possessed, 
Geoffrey learned from an ancient goat-tending peasant dame 
that a neighboring block of stone building, partially visible on the 


A TRINITY BALL. 


39 


left through oak and larch plantations, was Tintajeux Manoir. 
Would the girl who awaited his visit there be blond or dark? 
Something Mrs. Thorne had hinted about a Spanish mother. 
According to all mournful human probabilities, the heiress 
would be swarthy ; a black-eyed, atrociously, clever-looking 
young person, he thought, with shining hair drawn tightly 
from her forehead, with stiff linen collar and wristbands, 
with a dignified manner and inkstained fingers. Also, despite 
her seventeen summers, with a leaning towards stoutness. 

Geoffrey disrelished the picture projected before his mental 
sight about as mucli as in his present buoyant physical state he 
could disrelish anything. Consulting his watcli, he found 
with relief that he had reached the outskirts of Tintajeux five- 
and-twenty minutes too early. There would be time amidst 
this delicious wealth of atmosphere and hue that flooded him 
around, for a quiet smoke before encountering the terrible 
presence of Miss Marjorie Bartrand ! 

A suspicion that the heiress’s peppery temper might be 
roused if one’s jacket smelt of tobacco rather heightened the 
alacrity with which Geff Arbuthnot threw himself down on 
the fragrant sward and produced his pipe and pouch. The 
pipe was a black, ferociously Bohemian-looking clay, the 
pouch a delicate mass of silk embroidery and velvet. As he 
drew forth from it his short — alas ! that I should have to say, 
his strong-flavored cavendish, Geoffrey thought, as it was his 
custom to think four or five times each day, of the tender, 
friendly woman’s hand that worked it for him — Dinah’s. 

Poor Dinah ! When he saw- her last, an hour before, her 
hands were clasped together with the half apathetic gesture of a 
person to whom moral suffering has become a habit. A bas- 
ket of colored wools stood before her on the table, ready for 
her evening’s cross-stitching. Pound the corners of her lips 
was the look of silent endurancje which had become so pain- 
fully familiar to Geoffrey’s sight. And all this for what? 
There was no great sin, surely, in Gaston’s putting himself at 
once under Mrs. Thorne’s easy guidance. The happiest house- 
holds one hears of, thought Geoffrey, striking a vesuvian, are 
those in which the highest law of liberty obtains. Does not an 
artist, more than other men, want change, professionally? 
Dinah should know that a creator, of the cheap popularity 
order, as Gaston with his pleasant self-depreciation would say, 
must have a constant supply of straw for his brickmaking ; 
must have material, “ stuff,*’ must see brisk lights, sharpshad- 


40 A OIRTON GIRL, 

ows that calm twilight of domestic hai)piness does not yield. 
And yet . . . 

It was that constant unspoken and yet ” in Geoffrey’s mind, 
which, up to the present point, had rendered the close friend- 
ship of the three Arbuthnot’s a paradox. 

Leaning back against a little thyme-grown knoll, his hands 
clasped behind his head, Geff looked with eyes that had learned 
the secret of most common things in Nature, at the moorland 
weeds around him. Here were graceful quake grasses in 
plenty, and waving sedges, and the poet’s wood-spurge, three 
cups in one. Close at his right hand grew a stalk of rush 
crowned by four or five brownish insignifican flowers, the 
least lovely outwardly of all the brilliant Guernsey flora. 
Well, and it came to pass that the neighborhood of these de- 
generate, colorless petals altered Geff’s mood. He thought of 
the inherited mysteries and dooms of human life. He called 
to mind the sordid prose of the Cambridge outskirts, and the 
wretched men and women, forced dserters from the army of 
progress, who lived in them. He called to mind his own often 
despairing work, the struggles, hard and single handed, of his 
manhood, his youth. His youth — ah ! and with that, the moor- 
land scene faded. The years since he first saw Dinah spread 
themselves out scrollwise, suddenly illuminated, before Geff 
Arbutlmot’s mind. 

How well he remembered himself a lad of twenty ! How 
well he remembered tlie hawthorn-scented evening of their 
first meeting ! He was walking alone through the one street 
of Lesser Cheriton, had passed its rectory, its seven public 
houses, was honestly thinking of his approaching “Mays” 
and of nothing in the world beyond, when a cottage casement 
window opened just above his head, and looking up he saw 
her unornamented, in russet gown and apron blue, a jug of 
water in her white hand ready for the thirsty row of mignon- 
ette and geranium slips in the window-box. 

He loved her there and then. It was an old, a sacred story 
now, and Geoffrey questioned no syllable of the text as he 
scanned it quickly through. He took her picture back with 
him to his dark, book-strewn scholar’s attic in John’s, and that 
night he dreamed of her. Next morning he walked forth to 
Lesser Cheriton at the same hour, passed the rectory, the 
seven public-houses, and again caught glimpses of Dinah’s 
head as she sat, with a very fat old lady, alas ! of a very hum- 
ble class, in a close little parlor sewing, the lamp lighted, the 


A TRINITY BALL. 41 

windows fast shut, all the glories of the outside June night 
ignored. 

The same kind of mute worship went on the next evening 
and the next. Towards the end of the week the old lady of a 
very humble class accosted him. Geff could remember the 
tiiriil of that moment yet. Away through the garden gloom 
did he not descry the flutter of a russet dress, the outline of a 
girlish head downbent over a bush of opening roses? The 
young gentleman would pardon her for taking such a liberty, 
but as he seemed fond of tlie country he might care sometimes 
for a bunch of cut flowers. She was a lone widow and lived 
too far off to send in her garden stuff to the Cambridge market 
except in wall-fruit time. If she could dispose, friendly like, 
of a few cut flowers it would be a little profit to her. Some of 
the University gentlemen, she had heard, dressed up their 
rooms like a show with flowers, and the roses and carnations 
this term were coming on 'wonderful. If the young gentle- 
man would please to walk round the garden and see? 

The young gentleman walked round the garden. He bought 
as many flow^ers as his arms could carry awray. He learned 
that the girl’s name was Dinah Thurston, that she was “ap- 
prenticed to the dressmaking,” and had come up all the w^ay 
out of Devonshire to spend a month’s holiday with the old 
lady, her father’s sister. The Devonshire burr in Dinah’s 
speech disenchanted him no more than did an occasional 
lapse or two in Dinah’s grammar. When is a stripling of his 
age disenchanted by anything save frowns or rivals ? Geoffrey 
held original ideas on more than one burning social subject, 
had made up his mind — on the first evening he saw Dinah 
Thurston — that it w’as a duty for him and for every man to 
marry young. 

And he cared not one straws either for want of money or 
for plebeian birth. 

Good, because healthy blood flow^ed in this girl’s veins, 
thought Geff — the incipient physiologist. Sweet temper was 
on her lips. A stainless w^oman’s soul looked forth from those 
fair eyes. She was above, only too much above him in every 
excellence, inw^ard or external. What chance had he with his 
plain face, his shy student’s manner, of winning such a jewel 
as Dinah Thurston’s love? What hope was there that she 
would w^ait until the day, necessarily distant, wdien he would 
be able to w^ork for a wTfe’s support ? 

He became a daily caller at the cottage, and it is hard to 


42 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


suppose that both Dinah and Dinah’s i)rotector were quite 
blind to the truth. Garden stuff was ever Geff's ostensible ob- 
ject. He wanted cut flowers for himself, for an acquaintance 
who could not walk as far as Lesser Cheriton. He wanted 
radishes, cresses, so different, he declared, to the stringy salad 
of College butteries. He wanted to know when the straw- 
berries were likely to ripen. 

He wanted some daily excuse for gazing on Dinah Thurs- 
ton’s face. 

Hard, I repeat, to think that the feminine instinct, however 
unsophisticated, would make no guess, as time went on, at the 
state of the poor young undergraduate’s heart. But this is 
just the kind of point at which good women, in every class, 
are prone to innocent casuistry. At all events, Dinah Thurston 
and her aunt gave no outward sign of intelligence. The old 
lady took her daily shillings and sixpences with commercial 
gravity. Dinah cut the flowers or tied up little bunches of 
cress and radishes in a convenient form for Geff to carry. 

So, as in a new garden of Eden without a threat of the ser- 
pent’s coming, matters progressed for yet another fortnight. 

Lesser Cheriton lies at a junction of rough Cambridgeshire 
lanes ; a village girt round by blossoming orchards in May, by 
sheets of black water or blacker ice in December. In addition 
to its rectory and seven public-houses, it contains a score or 
two of the thatched, high-shouldered cottages common to this 
I)art of England. Being untraversed by any of the Maid’s 
Causeways, Lesser Cheriton lies somewhat out of the ordinary 
undergi'aduate track. Geoffrey had no intimate friend in the 
University save Gaston Arbuthnot, whose time was quite 
otherwise occupied than in watching the comings and goings 
of his simple scholar cousin. He was known to be a hard- 
working man who took his daily walk from duty and without 
companionship. But for an after-dinner stupidity — a turning 
missed — the little love drama would probably have unfolded 
itself with commonplace speed, and Geoffrey have gained a 
wife, for I cannot think Dinah’s unoccupied fancy would, at the 
age of eighteen, have been hard to win. The turning, how- 
ever, ivas missed — thus. 

Just as Geff, his hands fllled with flowers, was xmrting from 
the girl, one huslied and radiant evening, there came a rush of 
wheels — he could hear it now, dreaming over the past on this 
Guernsey moorland, and the blood rose to Geff’s face at the 
remembrance — a rush of wheels down the slumbering street of 


A TRINITY BALL. 


43 


Lesser Cheriton. For a few seconds the sound was muffled by 
the ivied churchyard wall where the road wound abruptly. 
Then, at a slapping pace, trotted past a high-stepping bay, of 
which Gaston Arbuthnot was for the moment the possessor, 
also Gaston Arbuthnot, in his well-appointed cart, returning to 
Alma Mater, with a brace of rich Jesus friends, after spending 
the afternoon at Ely. 

Lesser Cheriton does not lie on the road between Ely and 
Cambridge, Lesser Cheriton, we may boldly say, lies on the 
road nowhere. But these young gentlemen were in the ad- 
venture-seeking, after-dinner mood, when a devious turning 
of any kind is taken with pleasant ease. And here, on their 
wrong road, and in Lesser Cheriton's one street they found 
themselves. 

There was daylight lingering still in the low fields of Cam- 
bridgeshire sky. There was a young May moon, too, whose 
yellowish silver caused the outlines of Dinah Thurston’s head 
and throat to stand out in waxen relief against the dusky ar- 
butus hedge that divided the cottage garden and the road. 

Gaston Arbuthnot turned sharply round for an instant and 
saw her. Shouting a cheery ‘ ‘ Hullo ! ” to his cousin, he drove 
on, giving a little valedictory wave of his whip, ere he disap- 
peared. And Geff, the glory shorn suddenly, unaccountably 
from his Eden, bade Dinah good-night, and started on his 
four-mile trudge back to Cambridge, 

It was ten days before he again smelt the mignonette and 
roses of the cottage, or slaked his soul’s thirst by gazing on 
Dinah’s face. By early, post next morning came a letter say- 
ing that the uncle to whose reluctantly generous hand he owed 
the hard all of his life lay at the point of death, The old man 
\vas sound of mind still, and desired his nephew’s presence. 
A lawyer wrote the letter, and it was added that Mr. Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot would well consult his worldly interests by obey- 
ing the wishes of the dying man without delay. 

It was one of those crises when all our present and future 
good seems to resolve itself into a desolate “perhaps.” 
Geoffrey’s debts were few. Still, he had debts. The possi- 
bility of remaining up his nine terms at Cambridge might 
depend upon the will of this stern-hearted uncle who, 
dying, craved his presence. And yet, in obeying the sum- 
mons, might he not be risking dearer things than wordly suc- 
cess? jeopardizing hopes which already threw a trembling 
light over his loveless life ? 


44 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


He had spoken no syllable of his passion to Dinah, was too 
self-distrustful to tell his secret by means so matter-of-fact as 
a sheet of paper and the post. And so, like many another 
timid suitor, Geoffrey Arbuthnot elected to play a losing 
game. With immense fidelity in his breast, but without a 
word of explanation, he set off by noon of that day to London 
— not ignorant that Gaston’s eyes and those of Dinah Thurston 
had already met. 

A girl’s vanity, if not her heart, might vrell have been 
wounded by such conduct. In after times Geoffrey Arbutli- 
not, musing over his lost happiness, would apply such medi- 
cine to his sore spirit as the limited iiharmacopoeia of disap- 
pointment can offer. If he had had a man's metal, if, instead 
of flying like a schoolboy, he had said to her, on that evening 
when Gaston drove past them at the gate, “ Take me or reject 
me, but choose ! ” — had he thus spoken, Geoffrey used to 
think, he might have won her. 

To-night, on the Guernsey waste land, with heaven so 
broad above, with earth so friendly, the past seemed to return 
to him without effort of his own, and without sting. The 
fortnight he passed in London, the unknown relatives who be- 
set the sick man’s bed, the scene amidst a London church- 
yard’s gloom, wherein he, Geff, in hired cra^ie, was chief 
mourner, the reading of the will, the return to Cambridge — 
all this, at first, floated before his vision in grey monotone, as 
scenes will do in wliich one has played a spectator's rather 
than an actor's part. Then in a moment (Geoffrey's half- 
closed eyes scanning the moor’s horizon, the soft airs blow- 
ing on his face) there came upon him a flash of light. It was 
so intolerably clear, that every leaf and flower and pebble of a 
cottage garden in far-off Cambridgeshire stood out before him 
with a vividness that w as poignant, a vividness that had in it 
the stab of sudden bodily j)ain. v 

Springing to his feet, Geoffrey resolved to brood over the 
irrevocable no longer. He emptied the ashes from his pipe, 
then replaced it, with Dinah’s delicate morsel of handiwork, 
to his pocket. He took out his watch. It was more than 
time for him to be off ; and after a farewell glance at the 
campanula-shrouded knolls, Geff started briskly in the direc- 
tion of Tintajeux Manoir. But the ghosts would not be laid. 
There were yet two pictures, a garden scene, an inferior, upon 
which, whether he walked or remained still, Geoffrey Arbuth- 
not felt himself forced, in the spirit, to look. 


A TRINITY BALL, 


45 


The garden scene, first : time, seven of a J une evening, sky 
and atmosphere rosy as these that surronnd him now. Thirst- 
ing to see Dinah’s face, Geoffrey walked straight away from 
Cambridge station, he remembered, on his arrival from Lon- 
don. He was dusty and wearied when he drew near the 
village. The rectory, the seven public-houses of Lesser Cheri- 
ton, looked more blankly uninliabited than usual. Some 
barn-door fowls, a few shining-necked pigeons, strutted 
up and down the High Street, its only occupants. When he 
reached the cottage no one answered his ring. The aunt was 
evidently absent. Dinah, thought Geoffrey, would be busy 
among her fiowers, or might have taken her sewing to the 
orchard that lay at the bottom of the garden. He had been 
told, on some former visit, to go round, if the bell was un- 
answered, to a side entrance, lift the kitchen-latch, and if the 
door was unbolted, enter. He did so now ; passed through 
the kitchen, burnished and neat as though it came out of a 
Dutch picture — through the tiny, cool-smelling dairy, and out 
into the large shadows of the garden beyond. 

Silence met him everywhere. 

The roses, only budding a fortnight ago, had now yearned 
into June’s deep crimson. The fruit-tree leaves had grown 
long and greyish, forming an impenetrable screen which shut 
out familiar perspectives, and gave Geoffrey a sense of strange- 
ness that he liked not. Under the south wall, where the apri- 
cots already looked like yellowing, was a turf path leading you 
fieldward, through the entire length of the garden. 

Along this path, with unintentionally muffled footsteps, 
Geoffrey Arbuthnot trod. When he reached the hedge that 
formed the final boundary between garden and orchard a man's 
voice fell on his ear. He stopped, transfixed, as one might do 
to whom the surgeon’s verdict of “No Hope*’ has been deliv- 
ered with cruel unexpectedness. 

The voice was his cousin Gaston’s. 

Geoffrey had no need to advance farther. In his black 
clothes, among the trees’ thick leafage, he was himself invisi- 
ble, and could see by the slightest bending of his neck, as 
much as the world, in the way of personal misery, had on that 
summer evening to display to him. 

For there, at the entrance to the orchard, stood Dinah 
Thurston, the glow that lingers after sunset throwing up the 
fresh beauty of her head and figure, and there stood Gaston. 
They were face to face, hands holding hands, eyes looking into 


46 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


eyes. And even as Geoffrey watched them his cousin bent 
forward and kissed Dinah Thurston’s unresisting lips. 

Youth, the possibility of every youthful joy, died out in that 
moment’s anguish, from Geff Arbuthnot’s heart. But the 
stuff the man was made of showed itself. More potent than all 
juice of grape is pain for evoking the best and the worst from 
human souls. Desolate, bemocked of fate, he turned away, 
the door of his earthly Paradise shutting on him, walked back 
to the scholar’s attic in John’s whose full loneliness he had 
never realized till now, and during two hours’ space gave way 
to such abandonment as even the bravest men know under 
the wrench of sudden and total loss. 

During two hours’ space ! Then the lad gathered up his 
strength and faced the position. As regarded himself, the 
path lay plain. He must work up to the collar, hot and hard, 
leaving himself no time to feel the parts that were galled and 
wrung. But the others ? At the point which all had reached, 
what was his, Geoffrey Arbuthnot's, duty in respect of them ? 

It was his duty, he thought — after a somewhat blind and 
confused fashion, doubtless — to stand like a brother to this 
woman who did not love him. Stifling every baser feeling 
towards Gaston, it was his duty to further, if he could, the 
happiness of them both. The sun should not go down on his 
despair. He would see his rival, would visit Dinah Thurston’s 
lover to-night. 

Gaston Arbuthnot, a man of means, which he considerably 
lived beyond, occupied charmingly furnished rooms in the first 
court of Jesus. Peacock’s feathers and sunflowers had not, 
happily for saner England, been then invented. A human 
creature could profess artistic leanings, yet run no risk of be- 
ing expected by his fellows to live up to a dado ! Gaston's sur- 
roundings seemed rather the haphazard outcome of personal 
taste than the orthodox result of a full purse, and adher- 
ence to the upholstery prophets. They had the negative 
merit of sincerity. 

Walking with quick step towards Tintajeux, how distinctly 
those rose-lit Jesus rooms, the last in the series of pictures, 
came back upon Geoffrey’s sense ! He remembered an unfin- 
ished sketch in clay upon the mantelpiece; a Lilith, with lan- 
guid eyes and limbs, with faultless, passionless mouth, with 
coils of loosened hair; charms how unlike those of the demure 
Madonna in the cottage at Lesser Cheriton ! He remembered 
the smell of hothouse flowers, the like of which at all seasons 


A TRINITY BALL. 


47 


of the year was wont to hang about Gaston Arbuthnot’s rooms; 
remembered a pile of yellow-backed French books on a writ- 
ing table, also a framed photograph of the prettiest actress of 
the day exactly fronting the easy-chair in which his cousin 
Gaston was pleased to affirm that he “ read.” 

Geoffrey Arbuthnot liad to ^vait some minutes alone, his 
cousin’s level, self-contained voice informing him from an 
inner room that he, Gaston, was dressing for the last ball of 
the term, given by Trinity. Would Geff not have come to 
that Trinity ball, by-and-by? Ah, no. Mourning, weepers. 
Decent respect — cette chere Madame Grundy. And so the 
uncle had cut up decently i Nothing for him, of course. 
Kind of wretch whom uncles always would regard as belong- 
ing to the criminal classes. Had a mind to dispute the will*, 
ruin Geoffrey as well as himself by throwing the whole thing 
into Chancery ! 

Then Gaston’s airy step crossed the room to a waltz tune 
that he wffiistled. A curtain was drawn back. The two men 
whose future relations were to be one long paradox stood op- 
posite each other. 

Gaston Arbuthnot was in evening dress ; his white cravat 
tied to perfection, a tiny moss rose in his button-hole ; a pair 
of unfolded lavender gloves were in his hand. His handsome 

Bourbon ” face looked its handsomest. No traces of pertur- 
bed conscience marred his gracious and debonnaire mien. A 
man may surely find himself deep in a flirtation with some 
soft-eyed village Phillis, and at the same time like to dance 
with as many pretty girls in his own class of life as choose to 
smile on him ! 

He advanced with outstretched hand. 

“ I congratulate you, Geff.” 

The uncle had left Geoffrey a sum that for the forwarding of 
the frugal student’s worldly ambition was more than adequate 
— one thousand pounds. 

“ And I,” said Geff, his ice-cold fingers returning his cousin’s 
grasp firmly, ‘ * congratulate you ? ” 

Tliere must have been some modulation in his voice, some 
look on his haggard face, that supplemented these four words, 
strongly. 

Gaston Arbuthnot changed color. 

“ What, on Lilith?” he asked, shifting away, and bending 
over his unfinished sketch. “It is to be good, like all my 
things, some day. A new block in the pavement of the road 


48 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


to Hades ! At present his left arm, above the elbow, is, as you 
see, a libel on anatomy. ” 

Geff followed him. He rested his hand on his cousin’s shoul- 
der with such emphasis that Gaston Arbuthnot had no choice 
but to look up. 

“ I congratulate you,” he repeated very low, but with a con- 
centrated energy that infused meaning into each syllable — “ I 
congratulate you upon your engagement to Dinah Thurston.” 

So these visions of the past stood out ; not merely with rigid 
correctness of form, but with color, with fragrance, with the 
stir of human passion, the ring of human voices, to give them 
vitality. By the time the last one had vanished — the rose- 
shaded lamps, the actress in her frame, the clay-sketched 
Lilith, the yellow-backed novels dissolving into the actual 
greys and greens of this Guernsey moorland — Geoffrey found 
himself ringing, with a somewliat quickened pulse, despite his 
indifference to every form of feminine caprice, at the front 
bell of Tintajeux Manoir. 


CHAPTER V, 


MAKJORIE. 

The door was opened by a French serving-man, who bestowed 
on Geoffrey a bow such as valets used to copy from their mas- 
ters in days when the first country in Europe possessed a man- 
ner. Had not Sylvestre made the Grand Tour with the Rever- 
end Andros Bartrand more than half a century before the 
present time ! He was clad in a faded livery of puce and silver, 
wore long white locks that in this uncertain light gave Geoffrey 
the notion of a pigtail and hair powder, and had a wrinkled 
astute face, in which official decorum and a certain thin twinkle 
of humor, if not of malice, contended together agreeably for 
precedence. 

‘‘ Monsieur demands these la dies ? ” — from her earliest years, 
Marjorie Bartrand had received a kind of spurious chaperonage 
through this plural phrase of Sylvestre’s. “Will Monsieur 
give himself then the trouble to enter ? 

The look of the old manoir was cheery; its atmosphere was 
sun-warmed. And still the prospect of his approaching ordeal 
chilled Geoffrey’s courage. The thought of standing before 
Miss Bartrand on approval caused him to pass a bad five min- 
utes, as he paused in the drawing-room, whither Sylvestre had 
ushered him, for her coming. 

Could the initial letters of his terrible pupil’s character be 
decijdiered, as one constantly hears it asserted of women, 
through the outward and visible presence of the house she in- 
habited ? 

The Tintajeux drawing-room was over-vast for its height. 
It opened towards the south, upon the cedar-shaded lawn ; it 
communicated through a double row of fluted pillars, with a 
smaller apartment towards the west. The uncarpeted floors 
were of oak, black from age, fragrantly and honestly bees- 
waxed, as floors used to be when Sylvestre was a boy. Noth- 
ing like your gray-headed butler for keeping up Conservative 
habits of industry among the servants of a younger generation ! 
Over the chimney piece and doors were half moons, those 
graceful “ lunettes ” of a hundred years ago, carved in bas-re- 
lief and tinted in flesh color. The lace window draperies, 
4 


50 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


looking as though they must fall to pieces at a touch, were re- 
lieved by an occasional fold of rich hued crimson silk. Vene- 
tian mirrors hung at all available points along the tarnished 
white and gold walls. On either side the mantle-piece were 
miniatures of eighteenth-century Bartrands in velvets and bro- 
cades, no prefiguring of destiny looking out from their uncon- 
cerned, half-closed patrician eyes. In the centre stood a grand 
buhl clock, its design a band of Cupids hurling down rose 
leaves on some unseen object (the guillotine, perhaps,) behind 
the dial. 

In each of the deeply bowed windows stood a Petit Trianon 
gilt basket. They were full of odorous roses, pressed close 
together, as cunningly set roses ought to be, and showing no 
green between their damask and pink and faintly yellow 
petals. 

As Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s eyes took in one after another of 
these details, the room seemed to him a piece of special 
pleading for the whole past Bartrand race. He stood here in 
a world that knew no better! He was amidst the shades of a 
generation which had heroically paid the price of its misdeeds. 
And the fancy, true or false, predisposed him towards the 
present owners of Tintajeux. They had at least, he felt, the 
fascination of a pathetic background. Rare charm to an im- 
aginative man whose business has led him among the dusty 
tracks of our modem, low-horizoned English life ! 

Moving to a window, Geff looked forth across lawn, garden, 
orchard, upon as fair a sweep of Sapphire as ever gladdened 
human eyes; for here in the heart of the Channel you got 
beyond the North Sea’s yellowish green, and have real deep 
ocean blue. In the foreground, so near indeed that Geff in- 
stinctively stepped back within shelter of the window’s em- 
brasure, a clerically-dressed tall man was slowly pacing to 
and fro on the grass. Somewhat rakishly placed on one side 
his head was a black velvet skull-cap. An after-dinner glow 
shone on Andros Bartrand’s bronzed four-score-year-old face; 
between his lips was a cigar. A couple of excellently bred 
brindled terriers slunk at his heels. 

“ Ho, CEdipus, 

Why thus delay our going ? ” 

Taking his cigar from his mouth, the Seigneur of Tintajeux 
recited a passage from Sophocles in the Oxford Greek accents 
of sixty years ago, looking about him with the leisurely phj^s- 
ical enjoyment of the moment that was more common, 


MARJOBm 


51 


probably, at the time of his own youth — a time when Gothe still 
walked upon the face of the earth — than it is now. 

Something towering, individual, audacious, was in the old 
figure. Geff watched the Eeverend Andros with admiration. 
A man so richly vitalized that he could smoke an after-dinner 
cigar, 'declg;im Greek verse for his own pleasure at eighty — a 
man who had so proved himself superior to the common 
shocks and reverses of human life — should be one worth 
knowing, even though his fine moral equipoise must perforce 
be studied in the murky and dubious atmosphere engendered 
by a girl’s temper. 

Tintajeux Manoir with its weather-bleached walls, its 
courtly, faded drawing-room, its half lights, its rose scents, 
had already laid hold of Geoffrey’s imagination. The Seigneur 
with his antiquated Greek accent, his wise, subtly ironical old 
face, reciting Sophocles under this late sky, had for him a 
personal interest. If only the one jarring note need not be 
struck ! If the capricious heiress were but a full fledged 
graduate, a resident M.A. say, within the distant walls of St. 
Margaret’s Hall, or of Girton ! 

Scarcely had the thought crossed Geff Arbuthnot’s mind 
when he heard a door behind him open and close. Turning 
quickly, he saw, to his pleasure, a child dressed in a white 
and red cotton frock, confined by a bright-colored ribbon 
round the slim waist, and who advanced to him a pair of 
brown, beautifully-carved small hands, outheld. 

“ You are ten minutes late, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.” The 
faintest un-English accent was traceable in her voice. “ But 
you are welcome, a thousand times over, to Tintajeux.” 

Now Geff was a veritable child lover, and if this young 
person had only been two years younger than she looked, he 
would, likelier than not, have finished several of his life’s best 
chances by lifting her in his arms and kissing her on the spot. 
With a little princess of thirteen or fourteen one must be on 
one’s guard — for the first five minutes, at least, of acquaint- 
ance. 

He took her offered hands and held them, enjoying the arch 
vivacity of that upturned face, brimful of sunshine as a water 
lily’s cup; a face good as it was sweet. 

“ Poor Cambridge B. A. Poor abashed big coach ! ” thought 
Marjorie Bartrand. “The worthy man must be used to cold 
receptions, I should say, on his wife’s account. Now, let me 
set him at his ease.” 


52 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


Crossing to one of the Trianon baskets she softly signed to 
Geoffrey to fellow. 

‘‘ Do you see that ‘ Bon Espoir,’ Mr. Arbuthnot?” A hawk 
moth hovered, at the moment, with poised vibrating wings 
above the mass of roses. “In Spain we have a superstition 
about the ‘ Bon Espoir ’ when he enters a house^ If he is 
powdered with black we say, Bad luck ! If he is powdered 
with gold. Good! Ah,” clapping her hands, “and our ‘ Bon 
Espoir’ is gold! We are to be lucky, sir, you and I, in our 
dealings. Now I shall tell you another Spanish saying. ‘ To 
begin a friendship with a gift is a happy omen.’ Take this 
rose from me.” 

And with a movement of quick grace, most artless, most un- 
conventional, one of the finest roses in the basket was trans- 
ferred by the pupil’s hand to her future master’s button-hole. 

“ Grazias, muy grazias,” said Gefi, hazarding the only two 
words of Spanish he knew. 

Marjorie clasped her hands over her ears. 

“ You pronounce frightfully ill, though the words are true, 
Mr. Arbuthnot. Decent people say the ‘ z ’ in grazias sharp. 
They say ‘mou-y.’ Yes, sir, — and although you do teach me 
classics and mathematics — Spanish and French are my natural 
languages, and I shall always think myself free to give you a 
little lesson in pronunciation.” 

“Classics and mathematics! ” stammered Geoffrey Arbuth- 
not, reddening as the unwelcome image of Miss Bartrand was 
brought back to him. “ I believed — I mean my impression 
■was ” 

He stopped short. 

“ English University manners are not good,” thought Mar- 
jorie, shaking her head, pityingly. “ But I like my poor B. A. — 
yes, just because he is shy and rugged, and has that ugly scar 
across his forehead. I respect him for his unpolished manner. 
I will call on his wife to-morrow ! My imjDression was,” she re- 
marked aloud, showing such a gleam of ivory teeth in her 
smile, as rendered a large and rather square mouth lovely — 
“ my impression was that I advertised in the Chronique Giier 
nesiase for some one good enough to help me in my attempts at 
work, and that Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot offered to be that some- 
one. I hope, sir, you do not repent you of the offer already ? ” 

So he stood in presence of the heiress ; a little country girl 
with sun-kissed hands, innocent of ink stains, a child’s fledge- 
ling figure, a child’s delightful boldness, and not one barley- 


MABJOBIK 


53 


corn’s weight of dignity in her composition. Should he, obey- 
ing first impulse, believe in her, and so incur the fate of well 
snubbed predecessors? Or should he arm himself against the 
coquetry which this very frankness, this assumption of sim- 
plicity in dress and speech, might mask? 

Long ago, in Gaston’s Cambridge rooms, Gefi came across a 
French volume entitled, ‘‘ The Bad Things which Men have 
said of Woman.” He extracted therefrom, at more than one 
reading, such bitter nectar as his scanty knowledge of the 
tongue allowed. Several of the maxims had slumbered in his 
memory. They reawakened at this moment, and bade him 
play the philosopher, remember at what price per hour the 
heiress was about to hire him, and for what work. “Self-re- 
spect was in his keeping still,” cried half a dozen wicked old 
well-chosen French cynics in a breath. “ Let him retain it.” 

And Geff followed his own impulse. He looked on Marjorie’s 
unblemished child’s face and believed in her — with a circum- 
spect belief. 

“ One or two things, I know, want explaining.” A wave of 
Miss Bartrand’s hand signalled to Geoffrey to take a chair. 
Then she seated herself opposite him, the rosy western after- 
glow falling directly on her clear, truth-telling face. “ You 
thought my advertisement bizarre, did you not ?” 

“ On the contrary, I thought it sensible and to the point.” 

Geff’s answer was given with stiff courtesy. 

“ But too independent; for I had never consulted my grand- 
father, understand! I never spoke to the Seigneur till an hour 
ago, about my having a coach. Tell me, you don’t think the 
worse of me for this? ” 

Had he fallen asleep, lying among the blue-leaved campanu- 
las on the moor, with the waving sedges at hand, with the 
falcon soaring high overhead; was this drawing-room, with its 
mirrors and rose-scents and Cupids, a dream? Could it be 
possible that Marjorie Bartrand, the heiress, who never be- 
stowed a civil word upon any man, should plead, in sober real- 
ity, for his, Geff Arbuthnot’s, good opinion? 

“ I am obliged to think and act for myself. There is my de- 
fence. My grandfather, whom you will see presently, is clever 
— oh, cleverer than any man in Guernsey, perhaps in Spain ! 
Mathematics, classics — you even could name no branch of 
learning, Mr. Arbuthnot, that grandpapa has not.” 

“ Of that I am sure, Miss Bartrand,” 

“ He was known in Oxford sixty years ago. The revolu- 


54 


A GIB TON GIRL, 


tion so disgusted my great-grandfather with everything French 
that he turned Protestant out of revenge. A mean action — 
say?” 

That depends upon the manner of conversion.” 

‘‘ Well, he had come to be Seigneur of Tintajeux through the 
inheritance of his Guernsey wife, and to be a proper Seigneur 
in this country, you should be a Keverend. How great-grand- 
papa got to be ordained I don’t know. Andros, his son, was 
sent to Winchester and Oxford.” 

‘‘ The Seigneur I am about to see ? ” 

Yes, and Andros became a fellow of his college. He was 
one of the three best classics in Oxford. But he stands right 
away out of my reach.” Marjorie stretched up her slight arms 
as though pointing to the inaccessible mental plane occupied by 
the Keverend Andros. “ He lives with the gifted people of 
sixty years ago. For me that is too old.” 

‘‘ Kather,” said Geff, unable, though he would fain stand on 
his dignity, to repress a smile. 

Grandpapa is an eighteenth-century man. He was just 
born early enough to be able to make that his boast. And he 
has eighteenth-century ideas. ‘ Unless a woman be a Madame 
de Stael,’ says the Seigneur, ‘ let her keep silent. If she be a 
Madame de Stael,’ says the Seigneur, ‘ let her keep a thou- 
sandfold more silent.’ Now I,” cried, small Marjorie, “ mean 
to make my voice heard. I want to know nineteenth-century 
life straight through. I want to learn facts, at first hand. As 
a matter of lesser moment, I want a degree. Do you think 
London University would be beyond me ?” 

‘‘I must know first,” answered Geoffrey, ‘Ho what height 
of learning you can reach on tiptoes.” 

A fiash of indignation swept over Marjorie’s face. The 
possibilities of temper showed round that acute, square-cut 
mouth of hers. 

“It is correct masculine taste to laugh at a girl’s ambition. 
I know that. The Seigneur, Mr. Arbuthnot, — all have the 
same fine generosity ! But why do we lose time ? Perhaps, 
if you will come to the schoolroom, you will look over my 
books, sir. It is too late, of course, to do any work to-night ? ” 

“Not too late for me,” answered Geoffrey, in his heart lik- 
ing the girl better and better. “ I came out hoping we should 
begin to read at once. My time is yours.” 

Miss Bartrand led the way, her face held somewhat aloft, 
into a room plainly furnished as a study, and strewed with 


MAEJOlUE. 


55 


books and papers, on the west side of the inner drawing-room. 
As Geoffrey followed, every sense tempered to a keener edge 
than usual, he could not help remarking with what curious 
grace Marjorie’s raven-black tresses were braided. He had 
been to a few, very few, London entertainments in his life, 
had glanced at most varieties of our current female heads ; ” 
none tolerable to him beside a certain recollection of soft gold 
worn in little waves, that way poor Dinah had with her curls, 
upon a Madonna forehead. But Marjorie’s ebon locks, gath- 
ered high, in one geat coil, upon the summit of her head, 
compelled his admiration. The style was too foreign, alto- 
gether, for English taste. And the white and red dress, the 
gaudy waist ribbon, were too evidently got up for effect, 
Geoffrey decided, now that he could draw breath, and criticize. 
Tlie complexion, too, to a man who for years had had a living 
ideal of snow and rose-bloom before him, was certainly sallow. 
And those great black eyes ... 

Stopping short, Marjorie waited for her visitor on the school- 
room threshold. At the moment he overtook her, she turned, 
looked up at him. And behold ! her eyes were blue; intensely 
blue as, I think, only Irish or Spanish eyes ever are ; with a 
sweep of jetty lash, with a hidden laughter in them, although 
the possibilities of temper still lurked round the corner of her 
lips. 

“This is to be your torture chamber. From the time I was 
five I have worked myself up to my present state of ignorance 
at that inky desk you see, and under the rule of a long line of 
governesses, most of whom gave me and themselves up in de- 
spair. Now put me to the test, if you please, Mr. Arbuthnot. 
Don’t spare my feelings. Treat me as you would treat any 
backward schoolboy.” 

And Geff Arbuthnot obeyed the command to the letter. He 
did not spare her feelings. 

Marjorie Bartrand’s attainments were to the last degree 
patchy and scrappy ; the. typical attainments to be looked for in 
a quick, self-willed child, indifferently taught by a succession 
of teachers, and whose faulty studies had been supplemented 
by an avid, indiscriminate consumption of good books. 

“ Your classics are weak. Miss Bartrand.” 

Geoffrey remarked this, pushing papers and books aside, 
and looking kindly across the table into his pupil’s face. 

“ Oh ! I never liked figures. I knew that you would say 
so. ” 


56 


A GIB TON GIRL. 


With an eifort Marjorie Bartrand kept her voice under con- 
trol. 

“ But your classics are stronger than your mathematics.’’ 

‘‘ Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot.” 

You will have a great deal of work before you can bring 
either to — we will not say a high, but an ordinary level.” 

“Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot.” 

“You spoke of a London degree. Let us look at London 
matriculation, first. Children are trained at high schools for 
about six years, I understand, for London matriculation. 
And many — more than a third — of the candidates fail.” 

“I spoke of London because London gives you letters after 
your name. The older Universities would be more thought of 
in Spain. I have grandpapa’s leave to go to Newnham or 
Girton when I am eighteen. The first of all my governesses 
lives in Cambridge. So I should have one friend there.” 

“ The Girton and Newnham work is on the same level as the 
other colleges.” 

“ And you think that work beyond my reach ?” 

Gefi Arbuthnot thought that a girl with a head so graceful, 
with eyes so blue, with soft brow gleaming under such a 
weight of dusky hair, might be content amidst the flower- 
scents and cedar-shades of Tintajeux Manoir, content to let 
Euclid and Greek particles go — to be a woman, to accept the 
homely, happy paths wherein women may walk unguided by 
exact science, or the philosophy of all the ancients. 

The opinions he knew were heterodox and not to be uttered, 
especially by a man who, at five shillings an hour, had engaged 
himself to lighten the thorny road that leads to knowledge. 

“Memory will get one through most exams. Miss Bartrand. 
You have a good memory ? ” 

“ For all useless things, yes. In ‘ Don Quixote,’ for instance, 
you would find it hard to puzzle me. You know a little Span- 
ish?” 

“ Five words at most.” 

“ How deplorable ! A person who has no Spanish is not quite 
in possession of his faculties. If one had time to spare in these 
long summer days, I ” 

Marjorie broke off abruptly, coloring to the roots of her hair, 
as she remembered the existence of her tutor’s wife. A girl not 
ignorant of Spanish only; a girl wdio could just overcome the 
difficulties of the Prayer-book and lessons, perhaps, or write a 
letter without any glaringly bad spelling, on a push. 


MABJORIE. 


67 


If one had time to spare in these long summer days, Miss 
Bartrand?” 

Geoffrey Arbuthnot found a pleasure it had been hard to him 
to account for, in her confusion. 

I was going to say I would teach you Spanish. As if Spanish 
mattered ! As if there were not nobler, lovelier things in life 
than book-learning. But that was a real Bartrand idea. We Bar- 
trands, mouldering among our owls in this old place, cannot see 
daylight clear. We think too much of ourselves. Our minds 
are as narrow as our garden paths. I teach you Spanish, indeed ! 
I’ll tell you what I call that proposal.” She leaned across till 
her sweet bud of a face was close to Geoffrey’s, and spoke with 
a suspension of the breath. I call it a bit of devilish Bartrand 
pride and stifCneckedness.” 

Geff started, with a pantomime of horror, from the adverb 
italicized. 

“You know the meaning of Tintajeux? — Tint-a-jeu in old 
bTorman. You English in Cornwall say Tintagel — the Devil’s 
castle. A fit abode for us. Look at grandpapa ! He quarrelled 
seven years ago with M. Koirmont, the rector of our next parish, 
over a Latin quantity. Never in this world will grandpapa 
speak again to that innocent old man.” 

“A wrong quantity is no jesting matter,” observed Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot. 

“Then he has three daughters, my aunts. Neither of the 
three has spoken to tlie others or to him, for five-and-twenty 
years. No vulgar quarrel to start with. ‘ We Bartrands wage 
war on a grand Napoleonic scale,’ says the Seigneur. ‘ An ex- 
change of reproachful epithets is sheer waste of brain-power.’ 
The marriage of each sister in succession wounded the other 
sisters’ pride. All wounded grandpapa’s. It was quite sim- 
ple.” 

“You color highly. Miss Bartrand.” 

“I am giving you sketches from life. No coloring could be 
too high for showing up our Bartrand traits, the little faults of 
our virtues, as the French say, prettily.” 

Geoffrey felt himself on the road to disenchantment. The girl 
might have marvellous eyes, a wealth of dusky hair, tones of 
liquid music, a sunburnt hand that was a poem. The heart 
within her was hard to the core. Linda Thorne, by hidden 
affinity, perhaps, was not so very far out in her judgments. 
Marjorie knew too much, had learned bitter lessons in human 


68 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


nature, not from books but from keen reading of the men and 
women nighest to herself in blood. 

“Yes, we think too highly of our small talents. I, with my 
shallowness, to propose teaching a Bachelor of Arts anything ! I 
ought to be grateful to Mr. Arbuthnot for condescending to read 
with such a pupil. Now, which three mornings in the week 
could you give me?’’ 

He could give her Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They 
gravely arranged their hours. They talked over the work — say, 
a book of Cicero, the two first books of Euclid — to be looked over 
before their first lesson. Then Geoffrey Arbuthnot rose to his 
feet. Putting on a staid and tuitional manner, he stated that 
his terms, in Guernsey, would be five shillings, British currency, 
per hour. 

Marjorie’s face grew one hot blaze of shame. 

“ Oh! of course — i)lease do not speak of money. It is far too 
little. It is an honor, I mean, for me to learn, and I am 
coming ” 

She was just about to commit herself, and so considerably 
simplify Geff’s position — just about to blurt out, “and I am 
coming to call upon your wife,” when a footstep, alert, though 
it had paced the earth for more than eighty years, sounded on 
the garden path outside. The glass door of the schoolroom was 
pushed open, and old Andros Bartrand walked in. 


CHAPTEK VI. 

TWO m ARCADIA. 

An atmosphere of fresh country air, blent with tobacco 
smoke, surrounded him, as we like to think it surrounded Par- 
son Adams. He saluted Geff with that nice mixture of per- 
sonal reserve and general expansiveness which among a bygone 
generation was called breeding. He bestowed a partial smile 
on Marjorie Those Bartrand company smiles,’’ as she used 
to bemoan to herself, when she was a younger child. Count- 
ers that I must make believe are sixpences until the visit is 
over, until the round game melts back into our grim duel at 
solitaire ”). 

‘‘ Mr. Arbuthnot, I presume ? Welcome to Tintajeux, Mr. 
Arbuthnot.” He shook Geff’s hand with a distant affability. 

Glad always to see a man from the Alma Mater in our little 
island. Oxford is not the Oxford of my days, still ” 

‘‘Mr. Arbuthnot hails from Cambridge, grandpapa,” 
shrieked Marjorie with energy in the Seigneur’s deafer ear. 

“ Then, in one sense, Mr. Arbuthnot is to be congratulated, 
for Cambridge is nearer to Newmarket. A bitter blow to the 
talent that victory of Mademoiselle Ninette’s in the One Thou- 
sand, last April, was it not ?” 

“ The proverbial uncertainty of fillies retaining their form,” 
said Geoffrey. “ The usual reason for strong fielding. Still, 
the performance of Maydew in the Two Thousand was so good 
that the odds seemed legitimate.” 

Geff Arbuthnot cared as much for horse-racing as for the 
native industries of Japan. But the tastes of a man of four- 
score must be respected. And with a glance at the Seigneur 
of Tintajeux you could detect the sporting element, softened 
not ungracefully through a course of sixty years by the learn- 
ing of the scholar and the quiet life of the priest. 

“ You come over to England of course, sir, for the big events 
of the year ?” 

“Not I, not I. Wlien you arrive at the age of a hundred 
you will find j^ourself content with newspaper reports of most 
human goings on, great or small. I have my books about me 
here, my farm, my dogs, a horse or two, and my cure of 


60 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


souls. Marjorie, small witch, where are you ? Did you not 
say Mr. Arbuthiiot was to take Holy Orders 

“ Mr. Arbuthnot is to cure bodies, not souls.’’ 

Marjorie’s answer was given in a tone of altissimo derision. 

Geff put himself through a httle exercise of moral arithme- 
tic; tlie result required being the precise sum of dislike which 
a man of his age could feel towards a scoffing girl of seven- 
teen, a girl with eyes like Marjorie’s, silken black hair, and 
exquisite hands. It was not, perhaps, so large an amount as 
one might have looked for. 

‘‘An Aesculapius,” observed the Reverend Andros. “You 
know the parable, Mr. Arbuthnot? Two stalwart men. Na- 
ture and Disease, are fighting. A third man, the Doctor, 
seizes his club and rushes into the mUee, sometimes hitting 
Disease and sometimes Nature. You are to be the man with 
the club.” 

“ I am to be the man with the club,” answered Geif, relish- 
ing the old Seigneur’s manner. “As long as I confine myself 
to the setting of broken bones, sir, I hope to do as little harm 
as may be.” 

“ The doctors kill us no quicker than they used,” admitted 
Andros Bartrand liberally. “ When I was an undergraduate 
they relied on their brains, as you do now on your finger-tips, 
and I believe killed us no quicker. You are an honors’ man, 
of course ? At a hundred years old one is naturally ignorant 
as to the University regulations of the times. I know next to 
nothing of your Cambridge Triposes. You won your laurels, 
I assume, among bones and minerals ? ” 

The Seigneur’s prejudices were mellow and crusted as his 
own port. A born and passionate lover of classic literature, 
he regarded the admission of natural science into the Univer- 
sities as a mistake, a sort of shuffle among examiners and 
Liberal governments that enabled lowly-born classes of men to 
take high degrees. 

“Unfortunately for myself, I did not,” said Geif. “When 
my real college life was over, I saw bread and cheese in a re- 
mote perspective and had to begin bones and minerals from 
their ABC. In my day I came out eighth,” and being ex- 
ceedingly human, Geff’s face flushed a bit, “ in the Classical 
Tripos.” 

The Seigneur put his hand within the young j|j^an’s arm. 

“ Come for a walk with me, Mr. Arbuthnot. Eighth in the 
Classical Tripos — eh ! I will point out the limits of my vast 


TWO IN ARCADIA, 


61 


estate to you. Marjorie, small witch, go and set ready the tea- 
table. Mr. Arbuthnot will spend the remainder of the even- 
ing with us.’’ 

The daylight by now had gone into odorous dew-freshened 
dusk; a big solitary planet looked down upon the woods of 
Tintajeux. Geff felt himself in a new world, a thousand miles 
removed from pale, work-a-day, prosaic England. The afflu- 
ence of air and sea, the largeness of sky took possession of 
him, played in his blood, evoked that precise condition of 
mind and body which is so often at four-and-twenty the pre- 
lude to human passion. 

The talk of Andros Bartrand accorded well with the scene 
and moment. They spoke of men, measures, books — of books 
chiefly. 

I belong, really, to the eighteenth-century,” said the Seign- 
eur, as, with his hand on Geif’s arm, they paced the lawn’s 
goodly limits. Old Andros had the vanity of his age in seek- 
ing to exaggerate it. He had been known, or so Marjorie 
would affirm, to speak of himself as alive at the dawn of the 
French Revolution. Perhaps you appreciated his real age 
best when you reflected that the bride of his youth might have 
been a contemporary of Emma Woodhouse! ‘‘I was born 
before moral pulse-feeling came into fashion. This modern 
verse — ‘ singing, maugre die music ’ — don’t please me. I never 
mix my wines. I like to take my verse and my philosophy 
separate. Hand-made naper, rough edges, vellum, constitute 
poetry now-a-days, don’t they?” 

“ The aesthetic fever is on us still, sir, I fear.” 

“In regard to Church matters, I was middle-aged, mind, 
when Tract 90 decimated the country. Tractarian or Evangel- 
ical, Theist, or Pantheist — the Church went on quite as profit- 
ably before parsons began calling each other by such a variety 
of names.” 

“Names that all mean the same thing,” Geoffrey suggested, 
“ if men had temper enough to examine them coolly.” 

“Possibly. Let me direct your attention to my young 
wheat. You see it in the enclosure, just between that red 
stable roof and the orchard. I mean to cut my wheat with the 
Guernsey sickle, Mr. Arbuthnot, the same pattern of sickle, it 
is believed, that was used under Louis XI. I mean to get 
more for my wheat, per quarter, than any grower in England. 
There is the advantage of being a Channel Island farmer. One 


62 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


may not only be a Conservative, but, like certain great states- 
men, make one’s Conservatism pay.” 

A resonant call from Marjorie summoned them before long 
to the tea-table, a meal at which old Andros with his grand- 
seigneur air made his guest pleasantly welcome. The dinner 
hour at Tintajeux was five, the late dinner ” of Andros Bar- 
trand’s youth. By half -past eight, in this keen Atlantic air, 
broiled mullet, hot potato scones, with other indigenous Guern- 
sey dishes, were adjuncts to the tea-table that no healthily- 
minded person could afford to despise. Afterwards came a 
cigar smoked just inside the open French windows. ‘‘At a 
hundred years old,” the Seigneur apologized, “there was one 
thing a man might not brave with impunity, night air.” And 
then Geoffrey Arbuthnot prepared to take his leave. 

Business-like, he reverted to pounds, shillings and pence. 
It was a settled thing that he should read classics and mathe- 
matics with Miss Bartrand on three mornings of the week, at 
the sum (happily the darkness veiled the blushes on Marjorie’s 
face) of six francs an hour. 

“Classics and mathematics!” cried old Andros, assenting to 
the money part of the transaction with suave courtesy. 
“What will the little witch do with classics and mathematics 
when she has got them? ” 

“Enter Newnham or Girton with them, in the first place,” 
answered Marjorie unhesitatingly. 

“Newnham or Girton! ” 

The unfavorable summing-up of all arguments that have 
been put forth on the subject of woman’s higher education 
was in Andros Bartrand’ s enunciation of the words. 

“ jSTewnham and Girton send forth good men,” remarked 
Geoffrey Arbuthnot. “ In the future, sir, when the girls shall 
‘ make Greek lambics, and the boys black-currant jams,’ we 
look forward confidently to seeing Girton head of the river.” 

“At my age I am unmoved by new theories,” said old An- 
dros. “ New facts I am not likely to confront. There has 
never yet been a great woman poet.” 

“Mrs. Browning, grandpapa.” 

“Nor a great woman painter.” 

“Rosa Bonheur.” 

“ Nor a discoverer in science.” 

“Mrs. Somerville.” 

“ Nor a solitary musical composer.” 

The girl was silent. 


TWO IN ABCADIA. 


63 


“Yet all these fields have been as open to them as to men, 
have they not, witch? ’’ 

Marjorie Bartrand had passed into the garden. She stood 
impatiently tapping a slender foot on the turf and looking up, 
her arms folded, an expression on her face curiously like that 
of old Andros, at a strip of crescent moon, that showed be- 
tween the cedar branches. 

“ A new moon. I curtsey to her, twice, thrice, and I wish a 
wish!’’ 

“ Did you hear my question, witch? In poetry, art, music, 
have women not had just as ample chances as men?” 

“ Spanish women have had no chances at all,” cried Mar- 
jorie, raising her tone, as she adroitly shifted her ground, 
after the manner of her sex. “ For their sake I mean to work 
— yes, to get to the level of a B.A., grandpapa, in spite of 
your most withering contempt.” 

“For the sake of Spain, benighted Spain !” remarked the 
Seigneur genially. “My granddaughter’s blood is half Span- 
ish, Mr. Arbuthnot. I had a son once — an only son ” 

Could it really be that Andros Bartrand’ s firm voice for a sec- 
ond faltered ? “ When he was no longer a young man he went 
to Cadiz, for health’s sake, and married, poor fellow, a Span- 
ish girl who died at the end of the year. Marjorie has stayed 
a few times among her mother’s family, and has gone Spain- 
crazed, as you will soon find out for yourself.” 

“ Crazed!” rang Marjorie’s tuneful voice through the night. 
“ I want to hold my hands out to my own people, yes, to teach, 
if I ever know anything myself, among the girls of our poor 
benighted Spain. And I am proud of my craziness. I thank 
you for the word, grandpapa. It is the prettiest compliment.” 

The complexion of the family talk was threatening ; Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot hastened his adieux. But Andros had still a fare- 
well shot to discharge against the little witch. 

“ Our poor benighted Spain is the one country in Europe 
with a decent peasantry of its own. Get Mr. Arbuthnot, get 
any one who miderstands the matter, to talk to you about the 
English ploughman, and compare the two pictures. The 
Spanish peasant’s wife sews, knits, embroiders, reads her 
Mass-book and can cook a capital stew. Her drink is water. 
Infanticide is unknown. The men are hospitable, courteous, 
dignified. Among benighted people like these, Marjorie Bar- 
trand proposes to preach the benefits of a liberal pauper edu* 
cation as exhibited in England.” 


64 


A GIBTON GIBL. 


By the time the Seigneur’s ironies came to an end Marjorie’s 
small figure had vanished among the deepening shadows of the 
lawn. Fearful of losing sight of her altogether— for, indeed, 
Marjorie Bartrand was suggestive of something weird, sprite- 
like, and of a nature to take other form at an hour when owls 
do fiy— Geff bade his host a hasty good-night and followed. 

The girl herself was invisible, but a clear childish voice 
chanted the old ditty of Boland somewhere in the neighbor- 
hood, “Like steel among weapons, like wax among women.” 
Or, as Marjorie sang with spirit: 

“ Fuerte qual azero entre armas, 

Y qual cera entre las damas. 

“ I have found my gardening scissors, Mr. Arbuthnot,” she 
cried, emerging through the schoolroom window, a basket on 
her arm. “ Flowers smell sweetest that are cut with the dew 
on them. I mean to cut some roses and cherry-pie for — 
for ” 

“Your wife,” was on Marjorie’s lips, but she stopped herself 
abruptly, all Cassandra Tighe’s warnings about Geoffrey’s do- 
mestic embarrassments coming back to her. 

“ Let me help you,” said Geoffrey. A minute later Marjorie, 
on tiptoe, was vainly endeavoring to catch a bough of swaying 
yellow briar. “You are just one foot too short to reach those 
roses, Miss Bartrand.” 

Marjorie sprang up in air. She plunged with bold final 
grasp among the thorns, and succeeded in getting scratches 
destined to mark her right hand for some weeks to come; 
scratches that might, perhaps, recall this moment to both of 
them in the pauses of some tough mathematical problem, some 
arid point in Latin grammar or Greek delectus. 

“The result of over-vaulting ambition.” Thus from his 
calm altitude of six-foot-one, Geff moralized. “How many 
roses am I to pick?” 

“You are to pick three beauties I” said Marjorie, somewhat 
crestfallen. “Won’t you have the scissors? These briars 
prick cruelly.” 

But Geff wanted no scissors; his skin, so he told her, was of 
about the same texture as a stout dog-skin glove. When the 
briar-roses were duly laid in Marjorie’s basket, he put on the 
grave manner of his profession. It was his duty as a surgeon 
to make immediate inspection of her injuries. 

“You are losing a good deal of blood. Miss Bartrand.” 


TWO IN ARCADIA, 


65 


Taking both her hands, he held them up, in the streak of 
moonlight, not very distant from his lips. “ But while there 
is life there is hope. Three, four, deep wounds ! For my 
sake, don’t faint, if you can help it.” 

“Faint!” Marjorie’s laugh was a thing good to hear; a 
thing fresh as the chatter of birds in April, pungent as the 
smell of new-turned earth. “ I wonder whether any of the old 
Bartrands ever fainted. I mean, before they were guillotined ! 
Confess, we are queer specimens, grandpapa and I, are we not, 
sir?” Asking Geff this question, she left her hands in his 
simply until he should choose to let them go. The first inefia- 
ble coldness of girlhood was on her. She knew no more of 
passion than did her own roses. “Not very pleasant people 
to live with,— say! in an out-of-the-way Guernsey manoir.” 

“ So much must depend on the taste of him who survived 
the ordeal.” Geoffrey Arbuthnot quietly surrendered the slim 
hands resting unresponsively in his. “ At the present moment 
life in an out-of-the-way Guernsey manoir seems to me— en- 
durable.” 

A stronger word was very near escaping Geoffrey Arbuth- 
not’ s lips. 

“You are taken in by our picturesqueness,” said Marjorie 
with decision. “England must be an astonishingly ugly coun- 
try, judging from the effect our bit of Channel rock appears to 
make upon English people. Now to me, who have seen Spain, 
it is all so cramped, so sea-weedy. Look away to the left 
there — sea. To the right — sea. Move a little step nearer— ^ 
close here, don’t be afraid, and look where I point across the 
moor — sea again. Let an out-and-out big wave come some 
day, and the whole nation would be submerged, like Victor 
Hugo’s hero.” 

Tlie glimpse of silver-gray tranquil moor brought back be- 
fore Geoffrey the thyme-grown bank, the falcon liigh poised, 
the tuft of wood-rush — associated with the last rose visions of 
the squalid Barnwell pavements, of the men and women, forced 
deserters from the army of progress, who dragged out their 
span of human existence there. 

“ I should like to know what you are thinking about,” Mar- 
jorie asked, noting with a child’s acumen the changed expres- 
sion of his face. 

“ I am thinking about England, about the hard battles some 
English men and women have to go through with. A night 
5 


66 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


like this,” said Geff, ‘^brings sharp thoughts before one of 
one’s own life, one’s own uselessness.” 

In an instant Marjorie was softened. Tears almost rushed to 
her eyes. Her thoughts, true to her better self, followed 
Geoffrey’s as if by instinct. Then the good impulse passed. 
It entered her wilful head that this excellent young gentleman 
from Cambridge meant to sermonize her. She resolved to 
shock him. 

“ I used to feel goody-goody myself, very long ago. You 
would not believe it now, but as a child I was pious.” 

^‘I believe it thoroughly,” answered Geff, grave of counte- 
nance. 

When I wanted my lettuce-seed to come up I would per- 
form little acts of propitiatory contrition to Pouchee, the poor 
old Pouchee who lives in Cambridge now. When grandpajDa 
went out shooting I carried his game-bag, and used to offer 
fervent prayers, whenever the dogs came to a point, that he 
might kill his bird. Facts undermined my faith. Sometimes 
the point was false. Sometimes grandpapa missed his aim. 
Chaffinches and slugs ate my lettuce-seed. I turned infidel. 
I have remained one. Grandpapa says I have the hardest flint 
soul in, or out of, Christendom. Still, that is one Bartrand 
judging of another.” 

“ I am not a Bartrand,” remarked Gefl Arbuthnot. ‘‘I do 
not think you have a hard flint soul. You believe in wishes 
addressed to a strip of new moon, for instance?” 

They were standing at the highest point of Tintajeux; a 
small plateau, the approach to which was fashioned on the ex- 
ploded system of puzzle or maze. Long before Marjorie’s life- 
time this plateau — who shall say on what morning of youthful 
human hope — had been christened Arcadia! The country folk 
around Tintajeux called it Arcadia, still. Cool draughts of 
air were stirring from the moorland. They brought fragrance 
of distant hayflelds, honied whiffs of the syringa hedges that 
formed the maze. Would Marjorie ever curtsey to future 
moons without the scent of hay, the over-sweetness of blown 
syringa returning on her senses? 

‘‘ Some day,” observed Geff, as she maintained a caustic si- 
lence, ‘‘ I mean you to tell me what you wished for, a quarter 
of an hour ago, under the cedars.” 

Marjorie Bartrand turned from him, the determination of a 
long lineage of dead, high-tempered Bartrands on her face. 
To command, implied or spoken, had she never yet bowed, 
during her seventeen years of life, without asking the reason 
why. 

She asked nothing now. Her cheeks — happily the starlight 
betrayed no secrets — were glowing damask. For the girl knew, 
deep in her fiery heart, what the wish was; a wish by no means 
unconnected with her feelings toward Geoffrey Arbuthnot. 


CHAPTER YU 

ON THE BKINK OF A FLIRTATION. 

Meanwhile the solstice night grew at each instant more 
purple, more mysterious. Geff felt himself in love with mid- 
summer starlight, with Guernsey, with Tintajeux. Marjorio 
he would fain have engaged for a game of hide-and-seek among 
the neighboring orchards, or of follow my leader along the 
beach, white in the crescent moon’s shining. For v/hat was 
this poor small heiress but a child, with a child’s cold, sweet, 
unopened heart, a child’s quick temper, a child’s readiness for 
play, in whatever shape play might happen to be offered her I 
You will not tell me your wish, to-night, Miss Bartrand. 
Never mind. You will tell it me some day. To show you I 
bear no malice, you shall hear mine. My present wish, as I 
must leave Tintajeux, is to return to Miller’s Hotel by tne long- 
est road possible. You could point it out to me.” 

“I should rather think sol” cried Marjorie brusquely. ‘‘If 
you don’t mind a quarter of an hour’s nice hard scramble, your 
plan is to go up the Gros Nez cliffs, about a mile from this, 
and so back to your hotel along the edge of the steep. You 
are tolerably steady on the legs, I suppose?” * 

Tolerably I A too shallow purse, a too well endowed brain 
had combined to force Geoffrey Arbuthnot out of the ranks of 
the big and world-renowned athletes. But ask the All England 
football team, ask the men against whom the All England 
football team has played, if Arbuthnot of John’s be tolerably 
steady on his legs. 

“I don’t know that I am unusually feeble, Miss Bartrand. 
My weakness, perhaps, is more of the nerves than the limbs. 
Point out some path to me that you and the Seigneur are in 
the habit of treading, assure me, on your honor, that you think 
that path safe, and perhaps I shall have courage to attempt it.” 

“ Well, when you get free of Tintajeux you must go straight 
across th^ corner of the moor to Les Hiiets. At the end of a 
few hundred yards you will find four water-lanes meet. You 
must take the one that seems to lead away from Petersport 
and follow it until you get to Tibot. You know Tibot, of 
course? ” 


68 


A G IRTON GIRL. 


“I am shamefully ignorant, Miss Bartrand. I do not know 
Tibot.’’ 

“After that, a brisk two minutes’ down, down, through 
spongy wet earth churning at every step over your ankles, 
brings you to the shore. Kight in face of you are the Gros 
Nez heights, and if you get to the top all right (even in broad 
day it is not considered a very safe climb for strangers), your 
road home will lie straight before you, along the edge of the 
cliffs.” 

Geff Arbuthnot clasped his forehead. 

“When I get clear of Tintajeux I mustgo across the moor to 
an unpronounceable place where four water-lanes meet. Of 
these I must choose the one that looks least likely to lead any- 
where. Then down, down, through spongy wet earth churn- 
ing up to my ankles at every step, until I catch sight of the 
cliffs where I shall finally break my neck. Miss Bartrand, will 
you allow me to ask a favor? ” 

“ Doubtless.” A gleam of white teeth showed the hearti- 
ness of the giiTs amusement. “It rests with me, though,” 
she added maliciously, “to say ‘yes ’ or ‘no ’ to it.” 

“ Unfortunately it rests always with feminine caprice to say 
‘ yes ’ or ‘ no ’ to the proposals made by men.” 

The hour, or the moonlight, or some curiously occult and 
unknown infiuence must have been telling on Arbuthnot of 
John’s. He stood on the brink of a flirtation. 

“As you may have proved to your cost, sir,” thought Mar- 
jorie, not quite without a movement of pity. “ As you may 
have proved in that hour — I wonder how many years ago — 
when the Devonshire peasant girl decided on becoming Mrs. 
Geoffrey Arbuthnot.” 

“And my proposal is that you come with me, at least as far 
as the unpronounceable meeting of the water-lanes; start me 
on my downward spongy way to the sea, and then, unless I de- 
scend too quickly from the Gros ISTez cliffs, I shall have a fair 
chance of finding my road home.” 

To an agonized wife! It might be — so mixed is human hap- 
piness, thought Marjorie ironically — to the least little domes- 
tic lecture on the subject of late hours. 

“Feminine caprice,” she observed- gravely, “ is *in your 
favor for once, Mr. Arbuthnot. I will look after your inter* 
ests as far as Tibot. After that, your fate will be^ in your 
own hands. On the outside chance of your getting back alive 


OJSr THE BBINK OF A FLIETATIOH. 


69 


to your hotel, I may as well present you with some rather bet- 
ter flowers/’ 

She flitted about, moth-fashion, from one garden-plot to 
another, ever rifling the choicest and sweetest bloom of each 
for her basket. Afterwards, the lodge gates past, she accom- 
panied Geoffrey across a strip of common land and down a few 
hundred yards of darksome lane to the Hiiets, from which 
point the trickle of a little moorland stream guided them to 
Tibot. Here, emerging into such light as the young moon 
yielded, the moment came for bidding good-night. And here 
an exceedingly delicate question in social tactics presented it- 
self with force to Marjorie’s attention. What decorous but 
strictly indirect message ought to accompany her gift of 
flowers to Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s wife ? 

“You don’t mind carrying things, I hope, sir, as long as 
they are not from the butcher’s, or done up in a brown paper 
parcel ? Guernsey is not Cambridge, you know. Grandpapa 
and I carry everything on the end of our walking stick, from a 
conger eel downwards.” 

“ I will carry a conger eel for you, any day, with delight,” 
said Geoffrey. 

“ I shall remember that speech. I shall present you with a 
conger eel four feet long, in the market, and watch to see you 
carry him to your hotel. To-night I only want you to take 
these flowers for me to — to some one in the town,” observed 
Marjorie, with staid composure. 

But she was in no courageous mood. She listened as though 
she would ask counsel of it to the familiar little black- veined 
moor stream, eddying away with chill, clear voice to the sea. 

“You have only to command me,” said Geoffrey, with an 
absurd, a reasonless sense of personal disappointment, “ and I 
obey. The address of your friend is ” 

“You will have no difficulty about the address. Indeed, I 
am afraid,” stammered Marjorie, “ that at present, for another 
few days, I have scarcely a right to speak of the person as 
my friend. The difficulty is, sir, how will you carry the flow- 
ers ? In your hands, you say! A man who would climb Gros 
Nez cliffs must pretty nearly hang on by his eyelashes like the 
heroes in Jules Verne’s stories; at times he wants as Arm a 
grip, I can tell you, as all his ten fingers can give.” 

“ If I surmount these terrific perils, if I reach Petersport 
safely, your flowers will share my fate. Don't be anxious 
about them. Miss Bartrand.” 


70 


A GIBTON GIBL. 


Marjorie paused, her face set and thoughtful. After a min- 
ute or two, with the unconsciousness of self, the ignorance of 
possible misconstruction which rendered her actions so abso- 
lutely the actions of a child, she unloosened her waist ribbon. 
A length of twdne lay in her basket. With this she bound the 
flower stalks flrmly together, then knotting her ribbon, she 
attached it in a long loop to the bouquet. 

“ Before setting foot on the cliffs you must pass the loop 
round your neck — so.’’ For Geff’s better guidance she panto- 
mimed her instructions round her own girlish throat. By 
that contrivance you leave your hands free. And you must 
take care of my ribbon if you please, sir, and bring it back 
next lesson. It is a bit of real Spanish peasant ribbon one of my 
cousins bought for me in Cadiz. A thing not to be replaced 
in these parts of the world. Good-night, Mr. Arbuthnot.” 

‘‘You have not said half enough. You have not even told 
me whom your flowers are for.” 

“My flowers are for a person I hope, before long, to know 
and like well.” 

“ The description is tantalizing. It would scarcely furnish 
me, I fear, with the one name and address of the person 
wanted, among all the narrow, twisting streets of Petersport.” 

“The flowers are, Mr. Arbuthnot, cannot you guess— for 
whom they are meant ? ” 

“ I am ill at originating ideas. Miss Bartrand. I can guess 
nothing.’’ 

“ Because you cannot, or will not, which ? ” 

“ Because I cannot, because I am blankly unimaginative.” 

For a few moments Marjorie stood masterfully inactive. 
Then she flew discreetly back into shadow of the lane. On a 
slightly rising mound she stopped. What light there was 
touched the upper half of her face, and Geoffrey could see her 
eyes. He knew that her mood, for Marjorie Bartrand, was a 
softened one. 

“ The flowers are for yourself, Mr. Arbuthnot,” so her 
voice rang through the sea-scented night. “ For your better 
self, you understand. Don’t lose my ribbon, and, if you can 
help it, don’t fall over the Gros Nez cliffs. Good-night.” 

And with a wave of her hand — though he was blankly unim- 
aginative, Geoffrey believed it might be with a wafted kiss 
from her finger tips — she disappeared. 

Geff Arbuthnot’ s first experience in snubbing had coiiie to 
an end. 


ON THE BRINK OF A FLIRTATION. 


71 


Pondering over many things, most of all over the cruelties 
and caprices of youthful woman, he ran lightly down the ankle- 
deep water-lane, then across a miniature bay of argent, shell- 
strewn sands, to the base of Gros Nez cliffs. The ridge rose 
sheer above his head, a dark wall of over a hundred and fifty 
feet, polished as glass to the limit of the breakers, but above 
that line fissured, lichened, rough. 

Miss Bartrand’s sarcasm had not exaggerated the gravity of 
the ascent. The man who in an uncertain light should suc- 
cessfully scale Gros Nez must have not only his hands and 
feet but his wits thoroughly under command. 

And here the loop of ribbon attached to Marjorie’s flowers 
proved of peremptory use. 

I have tried to represent in Geoffrey a man little moved by 
the nicer shades of cultivated or hothouse feeling, a man more 
likely to be wrapped up in one grim fact of the mortuary or 
dissecting-room than in all the pretty uncertainties of senti- 
ment put together. But to-night a change had certainly 
passed over him. Before beginning his climb he found a deli- 
cate pleasure in suspending Marjorie’s bouquet, exactly in the 
mode her fingers had taught him, round his neck. He found 
a pleasure — the cliff’s dizzy height hardly won — in unknotting 
her ribbon, smoothing it out from its creases with a hand un- 
versed in millinery tasks, finally in hiding it away, jealously, 
in the breast-pocket of his jacket. 

Concerning this jealousy he asked himself neither why nor 
wherefore. In transitional moments like these, an old tender 
image fading even as a new one rises above the horizon, few 
of us in our inmost thoughts care to be motive-seekers. Geof- 
frey knew that he would not for an empire have let Dinah see 
that ribbon to-night, or any other night. He knew that be- 
tween him and the little girl with carved sweet lips and ebon 
hair there existed a secret. He knew that tutoring was a far 
pleasanter business than he had bargained for, also that the 
flowers Marjorie had given him, and which he carried in his 
hand, smelt of Tintajeux. 

But he took out his embroidered tobacco pouch, his short 
black clay, notwithstanding. He smoked his cavendish vigor- 
ously as he trudged back to Petersport. Arbuthnot of John’s 
might stand on the brink of a flirtation. He was not as yet in 
a state that need occasion a man’ s staunchest bachelor friends 
anxiety. 


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V 


CHAPTER YIIL 


CROSS-STITCH. 

Dinah was still busied over her embroidery frame when 
Geoffrey’s entrance brought the coolness of the night, the 
wholesome odor of heliotropes and roses, into the chronically 
dinner-oppressed atmosphere of Miller’s Hotel. 

Her blonde youthful face looked weary. The lightless, far- 
away expression, which you may always observe as a result of 
unshed tears, was in the glance she uplifted to Geff. 

“What, you are up still! Do you know that it is past 
eleven, Mrs. Arbuthnot ?” 

Four years ago, when Geoffrey first saw Gaston and Dinah 
in the bloom of wedded happiness not two months old, it was 
decreed by Gaston, least jealous of men, that his wife and 
cousin should call each other by their Christian names. 

Upon Dinah’s joyous lips Geoffrey, without an effort, be- 
came at once a familiar household word — dear good old Geff, 
through whom, obliquely, her introduction to the husband 
she so passionately loved had come about. 

But Geoffrey, after a few stammering, painful efforts, 
abandoned the calling of Dinah by her Christian name forever. 

He could and did call her so, to Gaston only. He intended 
to stand by her heroically, absent, or in her presence; intended, 
God helping him, to be the good brotherly infiuence of her 
life and of her husband’s. Looking upon the eyes that met 
his with such cruel self-possession, upon the lips which he 
had once madly coveted to press, Geoffrey Arbuthnot realized 
that he could never feel towards Dinah as a brother feels. He 
resolved that his speech, knowingly, should not play traitor 
to his heart. Gaston’s wife must, for him, be coldly, stiffly, 
conventionally, “Mrs. Arbuthnot,” until his life’s end. 

“ Yes, I am up still, Geff. There’s no chance of seeing Gas- 
ton till long past midnight. A lady like Mrs. Thorne, accus- 
tomed to India and Indian military society,” said Dinah, 
“would be sure to keep late hours. So I thought I would 
shade my poppies straight through. I must wait for daylight 
to put in the pinks and scarlets.” 

Crossing to the table where Dinah was laboriously stitching 


74 


A GIETON GIRL. 


Geoffrey seated himself at her side. He looked attentively 
down at her work with those aciite, deep-browed gray eyes of 
his. 

Your embroidery is very — ” he was about to say beauti- 
ful,’’ but checked himself. The star-strewn night, the hay- 
scents along the cliffs, the roses of Tintajeux*were in his soul, 
lifting it above sympathy with poor Dinah’s wool-work. 

Your embroidery is very delicate and smooth,” he went on 
truthfully. And how quick you are about it! You only be- 
gan the top yellow rose when I stayed with you and Gaston, I 
recollect, last Easter.” 

Dinah’s pieces of work were on a scale that carried one back 
to the female industry of the Middle Ages, yet was their ulti- 
mate use nebulous. Yast ottomans, vast cushions, yards of 
curtain border, imply a mansion. And the Arbuthnots’ man- 
sion at present existed not. But on what else should a childless 
woman, cut off from household duties, not over fond of books, 
forlornly destitute of acquaintance, and with an ever absent 
husband, employ herself? 

Once, long ago, the poor girl made Gaston a set of shirts as 
a birthday surprise. These shirts were lovingly, exquisitely 
stitched, as Dinah Thurston had been taught to stitch in her 
childhood. They were also a consummate failure. As a mon- 
ument of patience, he observed, they were beyond praise. 
As a fit — ‘‘Well,” said Gaston, kissing her cheek in careless 
gratitude, “it is not a case of Eureka.” 

Ho never wore them, never knew on what day, in what man- 
ner, his wife, fired by sharp disappointment, got them out of 
existence. Simply, the shirts did not adjust themselves well 
round his, Gaston Arbuthnoc’s, shapely throat. It was not a 
case of Eureka. The subject interested him no further. 

Plain sewing for grown men and women, Dinah promptly 
decided was fruitless labor. Of dressmaking proper, Gas- 
ton would never (excusably, perhaps) suffer a trace in his 
rooms. And so, the sweet fashioning of tiny children’s clothes 
not belonging to her lot, Dinah Arbuthnot it would seem had 
no choice, no refuge on the planet she inhabited, but cross- 
stitch. 

At moments of more than common loneliness she would feel 
that her life was being recorded — mournfully, for a life of two- 
and-twenty — in these large and not artistic embroideries. It 
seemed as though she stitched with a double thread, as though 
a dull strand of autobiography forever intertwined itself 


CROss-STrrcH\ 


75 


among the flaunting roses, the impossible auriculas and pop- 
pies that grew beneath her hands. 

The piece at which she now worked was begun in London, 
at a time when Gaston used to dine out regularly every night 
of liis life, and when his days, from various art callings, were, 
perforce, spent apart from' her. As Geoffrey spoke, she could 
see her St. John’s Wood lodging, her afternoon walks in the 
Eegent’s Park, worked gloomily in with every shade of those 
topmost yellow roses. After London came a short stay at 
Weymouth. Here Gaston had a “convict study” to make, on 
order, and with his usual good luck, discovered he knew sev- 
eral capital fellows in the regiment quartered at Portland. 
The capital fellows naturally delighted in having the versatile 
artist at mess, and Dinah passed almost as many lonely even- 
ings as she had done in London. It was in Weymouth, she re- 
membered, that her auriculas, her impossible auriculas, began 
to take color and shape. And now, in Guernsey . . . 

The heavy drops gathered in Dinah Arbuthnot’s eyes; push- 
ing her work frame away, she turned to Geoffrey. The lamp 
shone on her full. The delicate outlines of her cheek and 
throat stood out before him in startling whiteness. 

“And so you have come back from your coaching, Geff.” 
Her tone was quiet. Long practice had taught Dinah to re- 
press that sound detested by Gaston — as by all husbands — 
tears in the voice. “ How do you like the sensation of being 
snubbed by an heiress ? ” 

“ Pretty well, I thank you,” said Geff. “ Snubbing, as you 
know, Mrs. Arbuthnot, is a sensation I got used to in my 
youth.” 

“Was the heiress very bad? Did she make you feel misera- 
bly uncomfortable? ” 

“ No, I cannot go so far as that. I cannot say that I felt 
miserably uncomfortable.” 

“ But you don’t care for her? If you keep the work on, it 
will not be for pleasure ? ” 

Dinah’s heart was fuller than it could hold with love for her 
husband. Geoffrey was nothing to her, except the best friend 
that she and Gaston possessed. Yet she asked this question 
quickly, with interest. In her secret consciousness it was an 
accepted fear, perhaps, though Dinah knew it not, that Geoff- 
rey would never care, as men care who mean to marry, for any 
girl. 


76 


A QITtTON GIRL, 


“ Work that is to be decently done must always be done 
for pleasure/’ 

It was Geff Arbutlinot who uttered the aphorism. 

‘^And your evening, snubbing and all, has been passed 
pleasantly?” 

I have breathed ampler air,” Geoffrey made evasive apol- 
ogy, man-like. I have seen more blue sea and sky than ever 
in my life before. Miss Bartrand’s snubbing was — not beyond 
my strength. The Seigneur of Tintajeux is a specimen of the 
old scholarly, high-and-dry parson, worth walking any number 
of Guernsey miles to see. Some day, Mrs. Arbuthnot, I shall 
take you with me to Tintajeux.” 

To come in for my share of snubbing, too? ” 

Dinah asked the question, faintly coloring. 

Marjorie is a frank, generous-hearted child. You cannot 
think of her in the light of a grown-up woman. She is a Bar- 
trand, with the faults and virtues of her inheritance, the faults 
— pride and temper — visibly on the surface. I am very sure,” 
added Geff, bending his head, as though to examine the in- 
tricate shading of Dinah’s poppies, “ that you and Marjorie 
Bartrand might be fast friends, if you chose.” 

“ 1 have no friends,” said Dinah, “ except my own people, 
down home,” of whom, in truth, Gaston allowed her to see little 
enough, “and — and you, Geff.” 

The voice was unfaltering, the full good mouth was steady. 
Dinah made the admission, not as a matter of complaint, but of 
fact, and Geoffrey’s heart fired. 

“ That ‘ friendlessness ’ is the one huge mistake of your life,” 
he exclaimed. “ Gaston is not selfish, would not be selfish, un- 
less your unselfishness forced him into being so. You should 
never have allowed this morbid love of solitude to grow on 
you. You ought to assert yourself, to go into the world at 
Gaston’s side, whether you like it or not.” 

“ I should not like it now. When I was a girl, when we first 
married, my heart was light, against what it is now. It was the 
end of the London season, you remember. No, I don’t suppose 
you do? ” 

Does he not, though — that late July time when, after seeing 
the marriage over in London, he went back to his scholar’s attic 
in John’s; that Long Vacation when the skies were brazen to 
him, when day and night alike were one feverish pain! 

“ It was the end of the London season, and when Gaston took 
me to the Opera and twice down to dinner at Kichmond, I did 


CBOSS-STITCH, 


77 


feel,’’ confessed Dinah with humility, “ that I had it in me to 
be fond of junketing, — oh, Geff, there’s one of my country 
words! luckily Gaston can’t hear it — of pleasure, I mean, and 
society. But the taste has died.” Of what lingering, cruel 
death, who should know better than Geoffrey! “ Ladies of my 
husband’s class have not called upon me. I have neither rank, 
talent, nor a million. Without these, Gaston says, no woman 
can make her way in the English world.” 

Hot words were ready to rush from Geoffrey’s lips, but he 
kept them back. To remain on equal terms with husband and 
wife in this strange triangular friendship, did sorely tax his 
powers of self -repression, at times. 

“ Gaston would rejoice in knowing that your life was cheer- 
fuller, no matter how the cheerfulness was brought about. He 
has told me so, often. Now, here, in Guernsey, eight sea-going 
hours removed,” said Geff, lightly, “ from English Philistinism, 
what should hinder you from joining in any little bit of ‘ junket- 
ing’ that may offer itself? ” 

The hindrance of having no introduction to the Guernsey 
ladies.” 

“ Mrs. Thome has called on you.” 

On Gaston. He is dining with them now. He will dine 
with them four evenings a week. Yes,” Dinah’s voice fell, I 
know, at a glance, the kind of clever person who will amuse my 
husband. Mrs. Thorne is one of them. She is magnetic.” 

‘‘With the magnetism that repels rather than attracts,” re- 
marked Geff. 

“ That is your feeling about her. You and Gaston would be 
safe not to admire the same woman.” 

Geoffrey Arbuthnot was mute. Although his face was too 
sunburnt to admit of visible deepening in hue, it may be that 
just then Geoffrey Arbuthnot bln shed. 

“ You have no change in your character. You could be con- 
tent (a happy thing for your wife, whenever Mrs. Geoffrey ap- 
pears on the scene) with one mood, one voice, one face, day 
after day, before you for forty years. Is not that true? ” 

“ I am not an artist,” said Geff, after a pause. “ For a hum- 
drum man, prosaically occupied, the one face, Mrs. Arbuthnot, 
the one voice,” — ah, fool that he was ! his own voice trembled — 
“ might constitute as much happiness as we are likely to taste, 
any of us, this side death.” 

“ And Gaston is an artist in every fibre.” Poor Dinah’s esti- 
mate of Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot was invariably Mr. Gaston Ar- 


78 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


biithnot’s, except that she believed in him a vast deal more than 
he believed in himself. “ I ought to know that my dull daySj my 
silent evenings, are matters of course. It is not Gaston’s fault 
that he can only get inspiration through change. Some day, 
when the world is bowing down before a really great work of his, 
my hour of triumph will come. Who knows, Geff, if Gaston had 
married in his own class, if he and his wife had led just the 
usual life of people in society — it may be his genius would not 
have fared so well I ” 

Dinah never looked more perilously lovely than when, with 
flushed cheeks and kindling eyes, she spoke aloud of her am- 
bitions for her husband. The poor giiTs whole life lay in her 
one, passionate, oft-bruised affection. More than common 
beauty, a look of divine, all-hoping, all-forgiving love, shone on 
her face at this instant. 

Geff Arbuthnot recollected it wanted only ten seconds to 
midnight, and that he must fly. Had not long habit trained 
him to recognize the moment when flight was his surest, his 
only wisdom! 

“You and Gaston understand each other, as no third person 
can hope to do, Mrs. Arbuthnot. I consider you the two hap- 
piest mortals alive, though perhaps you do not know the ex- 
tent of your own happiness.” 

“ And you arb off to your pillow, to dream of the heiress 
who has not snubbed you,” said Dinah as he moved from her 
side. “Why, Geff!” For the first time she caught sight of 
the bouquet, somewhat cunningly held in shadow, hitherto. 
“What roses, what jasmines, what heliotropes! I have been 
wondering all this time what made the room so sweet.” 

And speaking thus, she stretched forth her hand for Marjo- 
rie Bartrand’s flowers. 

During nearly four years, a portentously large slice of life 
under five-and-twenty, it had been one long case of give-and- 
take between Geoffrey and Dinah, the “take” invariably on 
Dinah’s side. She took his heart from him to start with. She 
took the happiness out of his youth. Silently, unrecognized, 
Geoffrey constituted himself her knight-errant in the hour of 
his own sharpest pain. (Till her death Dinah could never 
know the part played by Geoffrey at the time of her engage- 
ment and marriage. ) In a hundred ways he had since steadied 
her husband in the path of right. By a hundred unselfish ac- 
tions he had smoothed nascent domestic discontents, any one 
of which might have worked deadly havoc with Dinah’s peace. 


CROSS-STITCH. 


79 


She had received all his devotion — a prevalent weakness, it 
is to be feared, among gentle, unimaginative women of her 
type — as the simplest thing in the world ! 

If Dinah, as once there was promise, had had children, doubt 
not that her moral nature must have widened. But this was 
not to be. A tiny, dying creature held between weak arms for 
half a day; some yellowing, never used baby clothes, jealously 
hidden out of Gaston’s sight; a kiss stolen, when her husband 
was not by to see, from any fair cottage babe she might chance 
to come across in her walk— this much, and no more, was 
Dinah to know of motherhood. 

And the love blindly centred on Gaston had in it an element 
which, although the word is hard, must in justice be called 
selfishness. 

‘‘Nothing Gaston likes so well as the smell of flowers on his 
breakfast table.” And Dinah still carelessly held out her 
hand in a receptive attitude. “ He says his brain must be like 
the brains of dogs or deer — smell colors all his thoughts. You 
will see, Geff !' Those heliotropes and roses will just set him 
kneading some new idea into clay to-morrow morning.” 

But the heliotropes and the roses did not quit Geoffrey’s 
hand. 

In this moment, ay, while Dinah was speaking, a current of 
new, keen, healthful feeling had swept through him. He felt 
more thoroughly master of himself than he had done since that 
May evening when he first blindly surrendered his will, with 
his heart, to a blonde girl watering flowers through a casement 
window at Lesser Cheriton. Marjorie’s roses, fresh from her 
pure touch, a friendly gift from the world-scorning child who, 
somehow, looked upon her tutor as out of the scope of scorn, 
were his. If Gaston needed inspiration from fiower-scents, 
Doctor Thorne’s garden, any other garden than that of the 
Seigneur of Tintajeux, must supply the inspiration. 

He made a dexterous exit, rushed away, boy-fashion, light 
of spirit, three steps at a time, to his own room. And before 
half a minute was over Dinah Arbuthnot had forgotten him. 
Poor old faithful Geff, his lesson-giving, his heiress, his bou- 
quet— what were these, nay, what were the alien concerns of 
the universe to a pathetically tender soul, quick smarting 
under its own immediate and narrow pain! 

Had Linda Thorne the power of holding an artist’s restless 
fancy captive, the genius of making time pass swiftly, the 
talent of clever talk, of giving genial little dinners, of dressing 


80 


A GIBTON GIRL, 


perfectly? Above all, was she a woman to expect nothing 
whatever in return for her devotion? A woman, strong 
enough to be philosophical, even, towards a rival who should 
vanquish her, in her own world with her own weapons? If 
she were thus gifted — Dinah moved to the window and looked 
out across the hotel garden to a point between an opening in 
the trees where the sea showed blue and foamless — if Linda 
Thorne were thus gifted, then might to-night be taken as a 
foretaste of what the next six weeks, the bloom and glory of a 
mid-Channel summer, had in store for herself I 


CHAPTER IX. 


i^XY TOWARDS LITTLE GO. 

•^Sixties aui “forties’^ are traditions, happily of the past. 
Arrnougn darnian spinsters may still go out to tea with a maid 
ana a Land-Xiiiithorn, the number of their candles is no longer 
a rigorous type of their social condition. 

But the society of an island, twelve miles long by four 
broad, must always be cousimgennan to the society of a ship. 
Wherever choice is circumscribed, human nature tends to eclec- 
ticism. Sixties and forties may have had their day. A 
stranger is amazed, still, at the number of island families who 
do not visit other island families, seemingly from hereditary 
topographical reasons. The Eastern people have not much to 
say to those of the West. The country districts hold scanty 
intercourse with the townsfolk. 

At the time I write of, the remote little peninsula of Tinta- 
jeux was probably the most exclusive paiish in the island. 

“ While we were on terms with the Rector of IS oirmont we had 
four people in our set,” Marjorie would say. “ The Rector of 
Xoirmont, his wife, the Seigneur of Tintajeux, Marjorie Bar- 
trand. Since grandpapa and M. Noirmont had their big Latin 
fight we have split up into further faction. Our sep consists 
of the Seigneur of Tintajeux and Marjorie Bartrand. We are 
a nation of two.” 

Of the things done and left undone by the Petersport inhab- 
itants, this nation of two was ofttimes as ignorant as though 
some dark continent divided them. The dances, picnics, mili- 
tary bands, garden parties, and general gossip of urban life, 
concerned the Bartrands languidly. Old Andros had his farm- 
ing, his dogs, his classic authors, and a curiously mixed per- 
formance which he called parochial work, to occupy him. 
Marjorie had her study, a boat, fishing-tackle, gardening tools; 
in days not so very far distant, had a carpenter’s bench; all 
the wholesome outdoor interests of a country-nurtured child. 
If Cassandra Tighe chanced occasionally to rattle round in her 
village cart and communicate to them the last town news, they 
heard it: rarely, otherwise. 

It thus happened, remaining away with her nst«i 

6 


A GIRTOIY GIRL. 


and her sea monsters in Sark, that the comedy in course of 
rehearsal between Gelf and Marjorie went on for several days 
without interruption. The master and pupil met seldom, save 
during the hours of work, when Geff, professionally severe, 
discouraged idle conversation. It did not become easier to 
Marjorie than it had seemed on the first night of their ac- 
quaintance to say the words, Your wife. The terms on which 
they met were frank, slightly stifier, perhaps, under the broad 
sun of noon than they had been among the syringa blossoms 
by starlight! They stood, on the outside, at least, in the po- 
sition of any commonly dense freshman, and of a coach, con- 
scientiously minded to get his man, if p'»ssible, through Pre- 
vious. 

On the outside. Growing to know M’>jorie’s transparent 
nature better and better, deriving keen refreshment from the 
badly-trained, fine intelligence which might have risen so high 
above the commonly dense freshman’s level, Geoffrey grew, 
hourly, more sensible that their seasons for meeting were 
“ ower lang o’comin,” that each intervening day was a space 
of time to be lived through! At this point stood Gefi. Se- 
cure, she was fain to think contented, in the knowledge of a 
Mrs. Arbuthnot’s existence, Marjorie worked with unstinted 
zeal, a vivid delight, such as the whole defunct race of govern- 
esses, morning or resident, had failed to awaken in her. 

So things progressed, through half a dozen lessons. Then, 
one sunless afternoon, sky and sea and speck of island painted 
in half-tones, misty, dubious as the happiness of human life, 
came the rattle as of a score of chained captives along the 
avenue of Tintajeux. Marjorie, pacing up and down the 
schoolroom as she boldly struggled with the irregularities of a 
Greek verb, recognized the sound of Cassandra’s cart-wheels. 
Pushing Delectus and exercise books aside, she ran forth joy- 
fully to meet her friend. Had not important news to be told ? 
Our Cambridge B.A. thinking good things possible in the di- 
rection of Girton, the emancipation of those benighted Spanish 
women, who only know how to manage their house or fold 
their mantilla gracefully, a few prospective inches advanced ! 

“You are inkier than ever, Marjorie Bartrand.” 

This was Miss Tighe’s first personal observation, thrown 
back over her shoulder as she knotted Midge, the unkempt 
Brittany pony, to a rail, with one of the sundry odds and ends 
of rope stowed away in readiness within that all-containing 
cart of hers. 


HALF WAY TOWARDS LITTLE GO, 


83 


“Only about the wrists,” Marjorie pleaded, holding out the 
sleeve of her holland pinafore, 

“ But I don’t see that University teaching puts flesh on your 
bones. You are growing too much like that picture of your 
mother. Eyes are all very well, especially handsome ones, 
but one wants something more than eyes in a face. You would 
have done much better” — who shall say Cassandra was not 
right — “much better to come with Annette and me to Sark, 
jelly-flsh hunting.” 

The speech gave an impression of being double-shotted. 
But Marjorie with unwonted meekness made no retort until 
she and her visitor were within shelter of the drawflng-room. 
There, in the familiar presence of the buhl Cupids, of the 
miniature Bartrands, who had dined, danced, loved or hated 
each other, and gone to the guillotine with such easy grace, 
the girl felt herself protected — oh, Marjorie, from what dim 
vision of a sin could that white soul need protection ? She 
began the story of her days, and of her intercourse with Jeff 
Arbuthnot, bravely. 

“ I feel half-way towards Little Go, Miss Tighe. I get my 
six hours’ teaching a week, and ” 

“You have always had teaching in abundance,” remarked 
Cassandra, wilfully misinterpreting her. “ Since you were 
twelve, you have had Madame Briquebec six hours a week.” 

“Madame Briquebec — a music mistress!” 

“ Six hours’ lessons, and twelve hours’ practice. It would 
require a Cambridge mathematician,” observed Cassandra, 
“ to reckon how many years, solid capital, out of a lifetime, 
are given by young women to such an instrument as the 
piano!” 

“I am not talking of the piano, as you know, Miss Tighe,” 
cried Marjorie, the heart within her rallying at the scent of 
coming strife. “ I never practised less for poor old Madame 
Briquebec than I do now. I talk of my six hours’ solid read- 
ing with !Mr. Arbuthnot.’ 

“Ah! I trust you find Mr. Arbuthnot solidly satisfactory ? ” 

“My tutor thinks well of my staying power. Mr. Arbuth- 
not sees no reason why, if I gave my life up to it for four 
years, I should not, some day, come out low in a Tripos.” 

“Mr. Arbuthnot, like the rest of the world, knows, perhaps, 
upon which side his bread is buttered.” 

The suggestion was Cassandra’s. 

“Bread — buttered! Let me me tell you, ma’am, I think 


S4 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


that a most harsh speech I Yes!” cried Marjorie Bartrand, 
her face aflame, ‘‘and verging on spiteful. A speech most un- 
worthy of Cassandra Tighe.” 

“ To my mind the subject scarcely necessitates so much in- 
dignation, Marjorie.” 

“ And, to mine, it does. If you implied anything, it must 
be that Mr. Arbuthnot flatters me from motives of self-inter- 
est, which is vile.” 

Old Cassandra took off her leather driving-gloves; she 
pressed out their folds slowly. Then she examined a signet- 
ring, masculine in size and device, that was always worn by 
her on the third finger of the left hand. 

“ Mr. Arbuthnot comes to visit you, professionally, three 
days a week.” Speaking thus she did not lift her eyes to the 
young girl’s face. “He comes to Tintajeux, at other times, 
naturally ? ” 

“ He came on that first evening when we engaged him — I 
mean, when Mr. Arbuthnot was good enough to promise to 
read with me. It was fine warm weather, you must remember 
— the night before you left for Sark. Grandpapa invited Mr. 
Arbuthnot to drink tea with us, and afterwards I walked as 
far as the Hiiets, to put him on the right track for getting 
home by Gros Mez.” 

“ He speaks to you, frequently, of the poor, stay-at-home, 
Griselda wife, 1 make no doubt.” 

The blood rose up, less at the question than at Cassandra’s 
way of putting it, to Marjorie’s cheeks. 

“ My tutor has never spoken to me of Mrs. Arbuthnot. You 
decided. Miss Tighe, that day when we talked it over under 
the cedars, that there might be an indelicacy in my mention- 
ing her too abruptly. And during our hours of reading we 
work, and work hard. I think,” said Marjorie, lifting her 
small face aloft, “that as regards the learning of classics and 
Euclid, it matters nothing to me whether Mrs. Geoffrey Ar- 
buthnot stay at home or walk abroad.” 

“Mrs. Geoffrey!^’ repeated Cassandra. “ Oh, that certainly 
is not the name. I may have led you wrong in the first in- 
stance. Geoffrey is not the name of the man people talk so 
much about.” 

Marjorie walked off to the schoolroom, from whence she 
presently returned with Geoffrey’s card, one that he had en- 
closed in his first stiff business note to the heiress of Tinta- 
jeux. 


HALF WAY TOWARDS LITTLE GO. 


85 


“Samson, Samuel, Cyril. I am nearly sure of Samson,” 
mused Cassandra. “ Accuracy as to names and dates was a 
kind of heirloom in our family.” 

“ The name of my coach is Geoffrey,” said Marjorie Bar- 
trand. “Behold it, Miss Tighe, in black and white — Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot, B.A., Cantab.” 

“ I cannot make this out at all. The whole thing is so fresh 
in my memory. Coming up from the harbor I called in at 
Miller’s. It was but human to ask that poor, weak, unreliable 
woman about her throat. Well, although she has swallowed 
Dr. Thorne’s drugs, Marjorie, she is recovering. Nature is so 
perverse in these chronic invalids.” 

“ Kecovering sufficiently to retail a fruity bit of gossip, 
which Miss Tighe enjoyed. I wonder whether the world was 
as scandal-loving in your days ?” said Marjorie, addressing the 
calm-eyed group of Bartrands beside* the chimneypiece. “ You 
were not a moral generation. Perhaps v hen glass heads were 
universal, stone -throwing was less in vogue.” 

“ Poor Mrs. Miller threw no stones. She told me plain and 
sad facts about these young Arbuthnot people. The husband 
forever philandering in the train of certain idle ladies belong- 
ing to our island society, the wife watching up for him till all 
hours of the morning, people, very naturally, speculating right 
and left ” 

But Cassandra Tighe stopped nhort. Like an arrow from a 
bow Marjorie’s slip of a figure had shot across the drawing- 
room. She stood at her old friend’s knee. A pair of eyes 
glowing with all the force of strong, fiery, yet most generous 
temper, looked down upon Cassandra’s face. 

“ I hate the speculations of malicious tongues. Miss Tighe. 
I will never believe that Geoffrey Arbuthnot ‘philanders,’ 
whatever the term means, or treats his wife neglectfully. I 
know him to be manly, straightforward, true. I think Griselda 
ought to be happy, oh! happy quite beyond the common lot.” 

The last words were not uttered without a quiver of Marjorie 
Bartrand’s lip. 

Miss Tighe finished, we may well believe, with the theme of 
love and lovers some thirty-five or forty years before the pres- 
ent time. Was the subject ever of vital personal moment to 
her! A jealously worn signet-ring, the portrait of a scarlet- 
coated, dark-eyed lad that hung in her drawing-room, were 
the only evidence to warrant intimate friends in hazarding a 
tentative “ yes.” Her present interests, said the people of a 


86 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


young and irreverent generation, were of fish, fishy. Are 
fibres discernible under the microscope in a dogfish’s brain? 
Can a mollusc see, or only distinguish between light and dark- 
ness? One thing was certain. In Cassandra Tighe’s breast 
lingered all tender, all womanly sympathy in the troubles of 
humanity at large. And something in Marjorie’s voice 
touched her, not to distrust, but compassion. She looked, 
with the pain that is half foreboding, at the young girl’s ar- 
dent, indignant face. 

Marjorie Bartrand, we are old friends. You always take 
the lectures I give you in good part.” 

“ I may do so occasionally. Miss Tighe, very occasionally. 
Let us keep to facts.” 

I hope you will take a little lecture in good part, now. 
Drive to Petersport to-morrow, and call on Mrs. Samson 
Arbuthnot.” 

Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot. With so many fables afloat, let 
us snatch, ma’am, pray, at whatever truth we may.” 

Mrs. Geoffrey, if you choose. Although my conviction is 
unshaken. Drive in to Petersport to-morrow. Call upon your 
tutor’s wife. Kemember her want of birth and education, im- 
agine a little excusable jealousy. Put yourself, in short, in her 
place, and I am sure your good heart ” 

‘‘ I have no heart. Grandpapa, the whole of my governesses, 
have impressed that upon me often.” 

‘‘Your good common sense, then, will teach you how you 
can best befriend her. That is my lecture.” 

Marjorie moved away into the nearest window. She looked 
out, athwart garden, orchard, moor, towards the Atlantic, 
gray, sullen, as though the season had gone back from June to 
December. A sense of deeply wounded pride, of cruel, inex- 
plicable disappointment mingled in the girl’s heart. 

“ I ought to have done the right thing,” so she communed with 
herself. “ I ought to have done it at once. I have just drifted 
into meanness. As though it could matter to us, Bartrand s, 
if every woman in the island declined to call on Mrs. Arbuth- 
not. It was you. Miss Tighe,” she turned round incisively on 
Cassandra, “ who preached to me the gospel of Mammon.” 

“ And one hears such nice things said of her, poor dear. 
The faults are so obviously the husband’s. Keally, if I could 
have known all one knows now, my wisest advice would have 
been — keep clear of them both ! In these prickly affairs, in 


HALF WAY TOWARDS LITTLE GO, 


87 


anything connected with a misalliance, you are pretty sure to 
get your hand stung, whichever way you grasp your nettle.” 

‘‘Too late in the day for mournful regrets. Miss Tighe. I 
have not kept clear of Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.” 

“The more the pity. As matters stand, Marjorie, I know 
that your conduct will be full of the sweetest tact. We have 
a few old-fashioned rules,” said good, well-meaning Cassan- 
dra, “to guide us in our perplexities. The first is, to do unto 
others as we would they should do unto us.” 

“To-day is not Sunday.” Marjorie’s foot tapped a quick 
little tune on the polished fioor. “ Please don’t let us have 
Sunday talk.” 

“How should we feel if we were Mrs. Arhuthnot? If you 
were Mrs. Arhuthnot, how would you wish Marjorie Bartrand 
should do unto you.” 

Cassandra’s tone was plaintively sentimental, infalliblest 
tone of all to stir up mischief, never far from the surface, in 
Marjorie Bartrand’ s heart. 

“ How should I feel if I were Mrs. Arhuthnot ? Wish that I 
had my precious liberty back of course, and envy every girl I 
met hers — the natural feelings, one would hope, of all well- 
conducted, sensible married women. Ah,” ejaculated Mar- 
jorie, folding her lithe arms, and with darkness like that of a 
swiftly-gathered thunder-cloud on her Southern face, “and to 
hear people talk as though such things as roaming husbands 
and weeping wives were necessities, as though the doom of the 
serpent was laid upon every son and daughter of Adam. A 
Dieu ne plaise that it should be so! There is one girl,” strik- 
ing her breast emphatically, “in Her British Majesty’s domin- 
ions who will shed tears for no man while she lives!” 

“ We will hope so, Marjorie,” said Cassandra, as she put on 
her driving-gloves. “A good many of us have held the same 
opinions at seventeen, and yet had occasion to modify them 
later on.” 


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CHAPTER X. 


‘‘they say ’’ 

But the thunder-shower soon broke, the blue sky showed 
beyond. Tears Marjorie Bartrand shed none. What sorrows 
had she of her own, what sweetheart, philandering or other- 
wise, to weep for? In regard of Geoffrey’s unknown wife, her 
brief-lived cynicism shifted, ere Cassandra had been gone an 
hour, into most' genuine, most girl-like pity. After an out- 
burst of temper, however scornful or unjust, there was ever in 
Marjorie’s heart a pungent and fiery fidelity which led her back, 
straight as magnet to steel, to her better self. 

That she should be disappointed in Geoffrey’s character was, 
she told herself, inevitable. What is there in any man that 
one should not, on close acquaintance, be disappointed in him. 
She had thought, judging from frank and plainly given confi- 
dences, that she knew to a minute how her tutor’s time was 
passed here in Guernsey. A little hospital work daily, Geff 
having met an old college friend in the house surgeon; a little 
study for his next Cambridge exam; a good deal of boating; a 
good many walks round the island ; three days a week his 
reading with herself at Tintajeux. The picture had been a 
clear, a pleasant one in Marjorie’s sight. And now matter so 
alien as this of fashionable fine ladies, midnight domestic 
scenes, idlers speculating right and left, must come, unwelcome 
and ugly blots, on the canvas. 

She was disappointed in Geoffrey, personally. She felt, with 
the certainty of her age, that she could not work under him 
again with the bright unblemished interest of the past days. 
The change of feeling should be made up, Marjorie determined, 
by kindness shown to his wife. On Mrs. Arbuthnot she 
pledged herself to call to-morrow. Meantime, yes, during the 
forenoon lesson, she would assume a sterner manner towards 
this recreant husband, this sober-mannered student who, after 
all one hoped of him, was so little raised at heart above the 
pitiful vanities of his sex. 

And in the first place her own waist ribbon must be summa- 
rily returned. This was Marjorie’s resolve when her head 


90 


A GIETON GIRL, 


rested on its pillow. The waist ribbon which, for fear of 
wounding Geoffrey’s feelings (his wife’s, perhaps, vicariously), 
she had suffered her tutor to keep, must be returned. Looking 
upon him in this new — alas! to Marjorie’s experienced mind, 
this too familiar — character of a philanderer, she could imag- 
iiije him, married though he was, exhibiting that bit of ribbon 
among his companions as a trophy. A gift, don’t you know, 
bestowed on one by a fair hand that shall be nameless.” Or 
he might show it among the idle fine ladies— oh, the hot shame 
at Marjorie’s sleepy heart — the idle ladies in whose train he 
followed, while his wife, ignorant of Euclid or Greek, but 
not devoid of human nature^ shed tears, not one single drop 
whereof the man was worthy, at home. 

Marjorie Bartrand fell asleep in a state of the most pointed 
and virtuous indignation. Morning brought her back, as 
it brings back all of us, not to accidental emotion but to the 
common habit of life. Her habit was to rise the moment her 
eyes unclosed, open her window, and gladly welcome the new 
day. She did so now. Standing in her white night-dress, the 
elastic air blowing on her face, she looked across a corner of 
orchard to the spot where Geoffrey, the crescent moon shining, 
plucked the briar roses above her reach. Away in the distant 
fields she saw the Seigneur, whose hour for rising was five, 
as he walked to and fro with firm slow step among his men. 
On her dressing-table lay an algebra paper, always her hardest 
work, which she intended resolutely to “fioor” before her 
tutor’s coming. 

How sweet life was, thought the little girl, how full of fine 
things that no man’s hand can take from us! Might it not be 
wisdom, even in a Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, as she had com- 
mitted the error of marriage, to make the best of it — enjoy the 
sun that shone, the wind that blew, by day, and look upon 
sleep, not weeping, as the state for which nature designs our 
race at midnight ! 

After a swim in the bay, a brisk run up to the manoir, Mar- 
jorie, with hunger befitting her years, kept her grandfather in 
excellent countenance at his breakfast, a solid country meal at 
which broiled fish, ham and eggs from the farm-yard, home- 
made rolls and Guernsey buttered cake predominated. Then 
she went to the schoolroom, and long before a figure she 
watched for rose above the moor’s horizon, had got the better 
of her paper. 

Her wits were at their brightest this morning. Geoffrey Ar- 


“THEY SAY- 


91 




butlinot, for the first time since they had known each other, 
threw out a few crumbs of praise when the reading closed. 
Crumbs of plain household bread, be it understood — no sugar, 
no spice — but that caused Marjorie’s heart to beat, the blood 
to leap swiftly into her mobile, all-confessing face. 

Greff watched her with admiration he sought not to hide. 
They had been working under the cedars, as was their habit in 
these fair summer forenoons. A solitary beam of sunlight 
pierced the thick and odorous shade. It fell full on Marjorie, 
looking more like a child than usual in an unadorned cotton 
frock, and with her silky raven hair spread out to dry, un- 
confined by comb or ribbon, over her shoulders. 

‘‘The endowments of life certainly don’t go to those who 
need them most.” Geft’ gave utterance to the truism with the 
want of preface that was his habit. “ Many a pale-faced, hard- 
working village schoolmistress would have her path smooth- 
ened by possessing a tenth part of your brains. While for 
you ” 

The words were leaving his lips in blunt fidelity. They were 
not well considered words, perhaps. Which of us can stand on 
mental tiptoe every hour of the twenty-four? But they were 
about as innocent of premeditated flattery as was ever speech 
offered by man to civilized woman. 

Marjorie interrupted him shortly; dormant indignation 
against poor Geff as a frequenter of idle society, a midnight 
reveller, a careless husband, flaming forth on him, lightning 
wise. 

“ For me, Marjorie Bartrand, living on rose leaves in Tintajeux 
Manoir — oh ! I should be equally charming with brains as with- 
out them, should not I? Thank you immensely for the compli- 
ment, sir. If I could change places I would rather be the vil- 
lage schoolmistress, plainly doing her day’s work for her day’s 
wages, than live idly on all the rose leaves, all the flatteries, the 
world could heap together.” Then lifting her eyes, a look in 
them to pierce a guilty man’s soul, “ At what time should I be 
likely to find Mrs. Arbuthnot at home? ” she asked him with 
cold directness. “ I shall drive in to Miller’s Hotel. I shall call 
on Mrs. Arbuthnot this afternoon.” 

A flush of undisguised pleasure went over Geoffrey’s face. 
All these days he had hoped that some offer of the kind would 
come from Marjorie, not doubting that in this small island 
rumors of Dinah’s beauty, perhaps of Dinah’s troubles, must 
have reached as far as Tintajeux. 


92 


A GIRT ON GIRL, 


‘‘ I am afraid Mrs. Arbutlinot is to be found at home at most 
hours.’’ 

‘‘So I am told.” 

“ Dinah goes out too little in this fine June weather.” 

“ Mrs. Arbuthnot must amend her ways. To-day is our Guern- 
sey rose show. There will be military bands playing, dandies 
promenading,” said Miss Bartrand wi-theringly, as she glanced 
at Gefi’s undandified figure, “ fine ladies thinking and talking 
of everything under God’s sun save the roses. Some of Mrs. 
Arbuthnot’s friends will surely tempt her join the gay crowd in 
the arsenal? ” 

“ Dinah has no friends. I mean, we have been too short a 
time in Guernsey to look for many visitors. In the matter of 
visiting-cards, ladies, I am told, afi'e prone to be sequacious.” 

So did Geff, with single-minded good-will, seek to round off 
the edges of Dinah Arbuthnot’s isolation, of Gaston’s neg- 
lect. 

“ And yet they say,” cried Marjorie, her heart palpitating well 
nigh to pain, “ that Mrs. Arbuthnot’s husband has acquaintance 
without stint.” 

“You must not believe half ‘they’ say, when men and 
women’s domestic concerns are the theme of conversation. Mrs. 
Arbuthnot’s husband chanced to meet accidentally with a Doc- 
tor and Mrs. Thorne here. The lady was a friend of former stu- 
dent days in Paris. It was the kind of meeting,” added Geff, 
apologetically, “ in which a man has no choice but to renew 
an acquaintance, and ” 

“ And Linda Thorne, of course, has called upon Mrs. Arbuth- 
not? ” 

The question came like a sword-thrust from Marjorie Bar- 
trand. 

“ I ... I am afraid . . . not yet,” answered Geoffrey, with 
hesitation. 

Gaston’s careless conduct in regard of Dinah was just the 
one subject that could occasion straightforward Geoffrey’s 
tongue to stammer. 

“ Ah ! Linda Thorne has not called on Mrs. Arbuthnot. That 
lowers one’s opinion,” mused Marjorie, “not too high at any 
time, of Linda Thorne.” 

“ When you meet Dinah you will see that she is a woman to 
care little for the common run of morning callers.” 

“ I shall endef*^or inst same to make her care for 
me,” 


^^THEY SAY 


93 


Majorie’s tones were icy, a swell of curiously mixed feeling 
was in her breast. 

‘‘Endeavor will not be needed. I never made too sure,’’ 
said Geff modestly, “ that you would pay this visit. But I know 
that Dinah, in her heart, is more than prepared to bid you wel- 
come.” 

He rose, visibly reluctant, from the cool green sward. Then 
with a sense that some subtle, intangible change had crept 
into his relations with his pupil, Geff prepared to take his 
leave. 

But perilous stuff had yet to be dislodged from Marjorie 
Bartrand’s conscience. She would not call upon the wife while 
that bit of Spanish ribbon, a loan made in a moment of fool- 
ish high spirits, remained unchallenged in the husband’s pos- 
session. 

“ I hope you have taken care of something I lent you, sir. A 
piece of colored ribbon tied around those flowers I sent, the 
first evening grandpapa and I had the pleasure of knowing 
you, to Mrs. Arbuthnot.” 

“ To Mrs. Arbuthnot. This is rough on a man,” cried Geff. 
“ Why Miss Bartrand you must have forgotten. Those flowers 
were given to me.” 

“ Don’t make too certain of that,” 

“ But 1 am certain. I can see you as you stood in the strip 
of moonlight by the water-lane, wishing me good-night. Your 
last words were, ‘the flowers are for yourself — your better 
self.’ ” 

“ The ribbon at least was given to no one,” retorted Marjo- 
rie, changing color under his gaze. “ It was lent to hinder you 
from breaking your neck. You meant to climb the Gros Kez 
cliffs if you could. To do that a real good Guernsey man needs 
his hands, both of them, and I thought it a pity ” 

“ The real good Guernsey night should be disfigured by a 
stupid stranger leaving the world too tragically. 1 thank you 
heartily,” went on Geff, as the girl blushed deeper and deeper. 
“ I measured the extent of your sympathy to an inch, at the 
time.” 

A ring of absolute independence was in his voice ; a suspi- 
cion lurked there, too, of hardly restrained laughter. For the 
situation was taking hold of him. Let us see, thought Geof- 
frey, in this feather-light matter of keeping or not keeping a 
morsel of sash ribboiij ^ar the small shrew could be 


94 


A GIBTON GIRL, 


tamed? Let us see which of the two should fitly, in the end^ 
be styled conqueror. 

So he thought, by no means forecasting that this feather- 
light matter of keeping a morsel of sash ribbon might be the 
pivot on which his life’s fortunes should one day turm 


CHAPTER XI. 

DODOES DESPAIR, 

‘‘ My sympathy, I believe, was rightly bestowed,’’ said Mar- 
jorie frigidly. “ I would not see the poorest wandering pedlar 
start for the Gros Nez cliifs without helping him to the extent 
I helped you. Even a pedlar might have a wife at home, sir. 
A foolish fond creature, shedding tears of anxiety for him in 
his absence.” 

The side-thrust did not seem to scathe Geoffrey’s conscience 
as it should have done. 

‘‘ Would you make it a special point that this married pedlar 
should return you your ribbon, Miss Bartrand?” 

I make it a point that Mr. Arbuthnot shall do so.” Mar- 
jorie delivered her ultimatum unflinchingly. “The ribbon is 
worthless except as a memento of some happy days I spent in 
Cadiz once, totally worthless to any living person but me.” 

‘‘And why should it not be a memento of happy days spent 
in Guernsey by myself?” 

She looked him straight between the eyes, too hotly, danger- 
ously irate to make immediate answer. 

“ Suppose, leading a prosaic life in the thick of bricks and 
mortar, that length of ribbon could act as a kind of talisman ? ” 

“ I don’t understand you in the least.” 

“ A charm bringing back to one’s tired eyes and heart the 
blue summer night, the smell of moon-colored hay fields, the 
whole moment when it was given to me.” 

“I will suppose nothing of the sort. It was not given. 
This is vapid, sentimental talk,” said Marjorie, concentrating 
her thoughts firmly on absent Dinah. “And I abhor senti- 
ment.” 

“ On that solitary point we agree.” 

“The ribbon I lent you to tie round Mrs. Arbuthnot’s 
fiowers is just a yard of woven, parti-colored silk. Buy the 
best match you can find to it, in the nearest mercer’s shop. It 
will be as good a talisman.” 

“ Are you a materialist, Miss Bartrand? Would you say 
that the ragged colors of one of the Duke’s regiments, the pen- 


96 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


nants of one of Nelson’s ships, were so much woven silk, more 
or less stained and weather torn?” 

‘‘ I do not see that my sash ribbon can or should be of the 
smallest interest to Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,” observed Marjo- 
rie, the blood leaping, more swiftly than it had done under his 
praise, to her cheek. 

In this moment she was a woman, the childish cotton frock, 
the hair hung out to dry, the slim immature figure notwith- 
standing. A dawning of her sex’s shame burned at her heart 
as she turned her looks away from him. In this moment, were 
it possible to assign place and date to matter so intangible, I 
should say that Geff Arbuthnot first, distinctly, began to fall 
in love. 

And suppose I feel that your sash can and ought to be of 
the greatest possible interest to me? ” he urged. 

Marjorie found no answer to her hand. If she had been 
reared under a different rule to Andros Bartrand’s, if she had 
associated more with girls, had frequented afternoon-teas and 
garden-parties, she would, doubtless, even in innocent little 
Sarnia, have learned the formula by which a married man, 
hazarding idle speeches, ought mildly and effectually to be 
crushed. 

Marjorie knew no more of flirtation or of its dialects than- 
she did of Sanscrit. She had gone through an engagement, 
once, during a brief uncomfortable fortnight; an experience 
which took the taste for lovers and lovers’ vows most ade- 
quately out of her young mouth. And now — oh, now she 
never meant to marry ! She bad her Greek and Latin in the 
present, a large outlook for herself and others in the future. 
Of flirtation she knew nothing, of engagements she knew too 
much! And she liked Geff Arbuthnot, and did not like the 
duties of repressing his frivolity, or of ranging herself against 
him in the civil wars of his home life. Yet to the utmost of 
her strength should both these duties be fulfilled. 

Your interests were appropriated long before you ever saw 
me,” she replied at last. ‘‘What hour, this afternoon, would 
it be convenient, pray, for me to visit Mrs. Arbuthnot ? ” 

Her tone, her look, might for a moment have suggested to 
Geoffrey that the secret of his youth had made unto itself 
wings and flown to Tintajeux. Only the very supposition 
was wild! Gaston, Dinah herself had never suspected the 
passionate madness which, in the May twilight of long ago, 


DOnO^S DESPAIR. 


97 


used to draw him night after night to the little thatched, rose- 
covered cottage at Lesser Cheriton. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot ? For anything I know to the contrary, 
Dinah will be at home between three and four o’clock.’’ 

“And at our next reading, sir, you will bring back my rib- 
bon ?” 

“I make no promise.” 

“ Of what mortal use can a bit of ribbon be to you, Mr. Ar- 
buthnot?” 

“I have had thoughts of turning this particular ribbon into 
a book-marker,” said Geff, boldly imaginative. 

“A book-marker! I ask you — do you think it honest to 
keep property that belongs to other people ? ” 

“ My conscience, I must confess, does not prick me.” 

“ If I order, will you obey ? ” 

Marjorie had turned abruptly pale. Her mouth quivered. 

“ If you order, I submit,” said Geif, watching her gravely. 
“ I will never go against your smallest wish, while I live. 
You shall have your ribbon before our next lesson. Miss Bar- 
trand. I promise.” 

The shadow of a quarrel was between them when they bade 
good-by. And at the thought of this shadow Marjorie’s illog- 
ical spirit was sore vexed. But I think Geff Arbuthnot walked 
back to town with a lighter spirit in his breast than had 
reigned there since the moment when he first saw Dinah and 
Gaston as lovers, hand clasping hand, in the little Cambridge- 
shire orchard. 

His knowledge of young girls, their instability, their hot 
and cold fits, their tempers, their fiuctuating emotion, had 
been derived from books. So his theories on the subject were 
mainly worthless. But men who in after days rival neither 
Thackeray nor Balzac, do often, during one phase of their own 
experience, make keen enough guesses as to the source of fe- 
male weakness. Geoffrey felt, with an instinct’s force, that 
Marjorie Bartrand’s blanched cheeks, her quivering lip, her 
passionate tones, were not the outcome of childish anger. He 
felt, with an instinct’s force, that the girl herself was a child 
no longer. Whither must this altered state of things tend ? 

The question was complex; and Geoffrey willingly let it 
rest. As he walked, the warm air was briar-scented, the birds 
murmured lazy midday nothings to each other amidst the 
lush hedges, the voice of Marjorie Bartrand filled his heart. 
What need to hope or fear for the future when one is twenty- 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


four years old, and the actual living hour has a hold, delicious 
as this, upon the senses! 

Dinah and her husband were alone together, a quiet little 
picture of domestic still life, when Geff reached the hotel. 

A vine-trellised slip of courtyard lay outside the north win- 
dow of Mrs. Arbuthnot’s sitting-room. Here, during the 
sunny forenoons, Gaston, pictuVesquely bloused, found it 
pleasant to work, when he was sufficiently in the vein to work 
at all. He wore his blouse, was in the vein, now. That which 
two days ago was a mass of rough clay, showed the airy out- 
lines of a baby-girl, seated on a Brobdingnagian shell, one 
small foot neatly shoed and socked, the other clasped, naked, 
between her dimpled hands, in an attitude of inimitable, three- 
year-old dismay. 

“ We label this work of genius ‘ The Lost Shoe,’ or ‘ Dodo’s 
Despair,’ or some equally pathetic and unhackneyed title,” 
remarked the sculptor, as Gelf entered upon the scene. We 
get our so many guineas for it, from our masters, and solicit 
further orders, do we not, Dinah ? ” 

“You should have no master but your art,” was Dinah’s 
answer. 

“ That is easily said. My wife, as usual, Gelf, is urging 
upon me to fulfil my mission, to deliver messages, to begin big 
and serious work. But I fancy I guage my own depths justly. 
I have no messages whatever to deliver to anybody. These 
trickeries of Philistine sentiment,” Gaston pointed with a 
shapely clay-stained hand to his model, “ are always a success. 
In the first place, they draw tears from Mr. and Mrs. Prud’- 
homme. In the second, the dealers approve them. What 
more can an artist’s heart desire ?” 

“Everything,” replied Dinah. 

But she spoke in parenthesis, and under her breath. 

“ Am I anatomical, Geoffrey ? This must always be import- 
ant, whether a man work with or without a mission. How 
about this bend in the left knee-joint ? Are my muscles 
right ? ” 

Geoffrey offered one or two strictly professional criticisms ; 
then after admiring the grace, the charm of the little clay 
sketch, gave his uncompromising moral suj^port to Dinah. 

Whoever possesses genius — well, talent, no need to fight over 
words — lies under the behest of duty ; Gaston’s duty, the one 
straight and unmistakable road that lay before him, Avas to 


DODOES DESPAIR, 


99 


abandon conventional prettiness, to go in for the expression of 
the highest thoughts that were in him. 

‘‘I am destitute of high thoughts,’’ said Gaston, his re- 
fined, intellectual face belying the assertion. ‘‘I have not the 
prophet’s role. If I tried to soar, I should immediately after- 
wards have to climb down. I have no original ideas to 
embody ” 

Gaston !” broke, with an accent of denial, from Dinah’s 
lips. 

And the dealers. Farrago in Pall Mall especially, are my 
masters. Before I left town Farrago’s advice was memorable. 
‘ The market demands nothing classic in statuettes, Mr. Arbuth- 
not. Nothing romantic. Above all, nothing to make us think. 
The market demands trifles, sir, trifles. Objects for the smoke- 
room or boudoir. Domestic amenities, as you agreeably say, 
for Monsieur and Madame Prud’homme ! And, for wider sec- 
tions of society, “ flavor.” In any case, trifles. Nothing, if 
you please, to make us think.’ ” 

‘‘Instead of obeying,” exclaimed Dinah, “you ought to say, 

‘ I, Gaston Arbuthnot, must do such and such work, no other. 
Let Mr. Farrago take my statuettes or leave them, as he likes.’ ” 
“ That style of talk is for giants, my dear child, putting 
aside the fact that I am bound to Farrago for another six 
months. Carlyle talked so to the Edinburgh Beviewers. 
Viewed by the light of after success his talk may sound grand. 
If Carlyle had not speedily written the ‘ French Eevolution ’ it 
would have been called ‘ tall.’ ” 

“ But I want you to write your ‘ French Revolution ’ in clay,” 
Dinah persisted. “ Here, in Guernsey, you know, you planned 
to make studies, always studies, for the great work you will 
set about in Florence. But then,” a piece of embroidery was 
between Dinah’s hands; she lifted her eyes from her wools and 
silks at this juncture, and fixed them, full of earnest reproach, 
on Gaston, “there have been unfortunate throw-backs.” 

“ Throw-backs ! As how ? ” Gaston Arbuthnot applied him- 
self to the correction of one of the points anatomically criti- 
cised by Geoferey. “As long as I am bound to Farrago, even 
feminine morality, my love, will allow that I should be honest. 
Every saleable thing I do must pass, as per contract, through 
Farrago’s hands. Taking one day with another, I have got 
through rather more work than the average, here in Guern- 
sey.” 

“ Have you put your own thoughts into form, Gaston ? This 


100 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


model, when it is finished’’ — she glanced somewhat coldly at 
‘‘Dodo’s Despair ” — “will be a portrait of Kahnee Thorne, 
simply.” 

“Kahnee Thorne, idealized!” Gaston’s rejoinder was made 
with the unruffled temper that characterized him. “My clay 
infant has fiesh upon her bones, and an infant’s face. Kahnee, 
though I love the child, is but a poor little wizened Bengalee, 
at her best.” 

“Will the portrait of Kahnee’s mamma, the model you have 
on hand at The Bungalow, need to be idealized also ?” 

“Dinah, you should be magnanimous.” And with a move- 
ment that in a less composed man might have been a shrug of 
the shoulders, Mr. Arbuthnot prepared to clean the clay from 
his hands. “ A pretty woman — well, if you shake your head, 
an exceedingly beautiful woman — need never utter a sarcasm 
about a plain one.” 

At the negative compliment a color, soft as the pure pink 
veining of a shell cameo, stained Dinah’s face. Her breast 
throbbed. And all the time the speech, delicious in sound, 
signified nothing. Gaston had been engaged for days past to 
escort plain Mrs. Linda to the rose show, and felt not the 
smallest temptation to break his engagement. Dinah must be 
magnanimous! Dinah’s husband, after two or three hours’ 
facile work on “Dodo’s Despair,” needed relaxation, and 
W'ould have it. 

“ You ought to take me to the show, Geff,” she pleaded, 
turning round half jestingly, half in earnest, to Geoffrey. 
“ What would Linda Thorne, what would Gaston think, if I 
suddenly made my appearance among all the fine ladies of 
Guernsey ? ” 

“ Linda Thorne might have her own views,” said Gaston. 
“When Dinah Arbuthnot shows her face, every fine lady in 
Guernsey, or elsewhere, must be on the spot eclipsed.” 

Whatever Dinah thought, Geff knew that a certain insincer- 
ity underlay the speech, and controlled a pungent remark with 
effort. The friendship of the Arbuthnot trio was never more 
sharply paradoxical than at this moment. 


CHAPTER XII. 


YELLOW-BACKED NOVELS. 

The June rose-sliow stands second only to Her Majesty’:? 
Birthday among the big events of the Channel Island’s calen- 
dar. 

By three o’clock the road between Petersport and the Ar- 
senal plateau was filled with a growing stream of men anJ 
women. Simple rose lovers many of them, but some lovers of 
another kind. And some roses themselves! What buoyani 
young figures fiuttered past the window whence Dinah Ar- 
buthnot, shrouded from view, undreaming of her own future, 
watched the crowd I What ruddy fine complexions were here, 
what well-shapen noses and mouths, what dark Xoiinan eyes) 
Why, you might scour half-a-dozen English counties before 
you could bring together as many handsome girls as would 
soon be within the Guernsey Arsenal’s four walls. Must not 
excuse be made — the thought was Dinah’s — for an artist who 
should long to stock his brains’ tablets with so much beauty, 
even though an idle tear or two, a little discontent in some 
one left at home, must be the price of his experience ? 

She strove her best to be magnanimous, to give a valianli 

yes ” to this self-propounded question. Then, even as she 
made the effort, a group of persons drew nigh from the direc- 
tion of Petersport, at the sight of whom, poor Dinah’s mag- 
nanimity and the wifely heart that beat in her breast stood in- 
stantly at variance. Her hands turned cold and rigid. A 
prophecy, rather than an actual living look of jealous anger, 
swept all the youthful gentleness from her face. 

A group of four persons: Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, Mrs. 
Thorne, the small daughter, Rahnee, and a native nurse. Daz- 
zling was Mrs. Linda in whatever furbelows and head gear 
local Parisian milliners had impressed on the feminine Samian 
mind as the “ last thing out.” Overdecked in embroidery and 
ribbons was Rahnee, a sorrowfully thin little child, with dark- 
ringed eyes, sallow cheeks, bangles on wrist. A typical Indian 
child, perverse, sickly, unruled, and who at the present 


102 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


moment was dancing, knowingly and deliberately, on her 
mother’s fragile flounces at every second step. 

“ lam sure one ought to reform her.” Thus Linda would 
make confession among her matron friends. But what is to 
be done as long as you keep an ayah ? You must reform the 
ayah first. That is just the one enthusiasm of humanity which 
is outside my limits, to reform an ayah.” 

Rahnee, I repeat, danced persistently and with effect on her 
mother’s cobweb furbelows, as she capered and twisted herself 
along the street. Linda’s expression was as little honied as 
the expression of a coquette can ever be in the presence of a 
man she seeks to charm. The ayah vainly gesticulated, vainly 
uttered expostulations in unknown Eastern tongues from the 
rear. Break down and rout of one or other of the forces 
seemed imminent. Suddenly, just as they were passing the 
hotel — perhaps it was this incident stabbed Dinah’s unreason- 
ing heart to the quick — Gaston came to the fore as mediator. 
Holding out both hands, Gaston Arbuthnot offered small 
Rahnee a place on his shoulder. Dinah could hear his pleas- 
ant voice, indicative of a mind content with its surroundings, 
as he began some sage nursery talk, all engrossing, it would 
seem, to Rahnee’ s soul. The thin arms closed round his neck, 
the tiny primrose-gloved fingers played with his hair. Mrs. 
Linda, a restored picture of amiable maternity, trotted behind. 
The ayah followed after; her black orbs pantomiming un- 
speakable things to such portions of the Guernsey world as had 
been chance witnesses of the scene. Then, domestic- wise, the 
group of four persons went their way. 

A choking, hysterical lump rose in Dinah’s throat. With a 
vague sense of her Own worthiness, a suspicion that if Dinah 
Arbuthnot was out of keeping with sunshine and flowers and 
little children, Dinah Arbuthnot herself must be to blame, she 
watched Gaston and his friends until they had turned the 
corner towards the Arsenal. Barely was the final shimmer of 
Linda’s flounces lost to view, when a clatter of hoofs ap- 
proached rapidly along the Petersport road. A miniature 
phaeton with a girl driver, and drawn by a pair of small black 
ponies, came in sight. A minute later, and Marjorie Bartrand, 
who had drawn up before the portico of the hotel, was inquir- 
ing — yes, there could be no mistake; through the open win- 
dows the sound of her own name reached Dinah distinctly — 

If Mrs. Arbuthnot was at home ? ” 

Dinah had not received one morning visitor in Guernsey. 


YELLOW-BACKEI> NOVELS. 


103 


How many morning visitors (upon Mrs., not Mr., Arbuthnot) 
had Dinah received since her marriage ? The unexpected re- 
spectability of the event — for our Tintajeux Bartrands, mind 
you, with all their eccentricity, stand on the topmost rung of 
the social insular ladder — moved Mr. Miller’s mind. A man of 
tact and discrimination, the host proceeded himself to usher 
Marjorie in. 

The Arbuthnots’ parlor door was thrown open with an air. 
^‘jMiss Bartrand, of Tintajeux,” was announced Jii Miller’s 
most professional voice. Then came the meeting to which 
Marjorie had looked forward with resolute conscience, perhaps 
with lurking doubts as to the cordiality 'of the reception that 
should await her. 

‘‘This is very good of you.” Dinah spoke in her usual 
voice. She came forward with the simplicity that draws so 
near to De Vere repose. “ Geoffrey never warned me I was to 
look for such a pleasure. I take it very kind of you to come, 
Miss Bartrand.” 

Dinah’s trouble had just reached that level when the small- 
est act of good will, from friend or stranger, may cause the 
cup to overflow. Her eyes suffused, her color heightened. 

“ Mr. Arbuthnot thought I should be likely to find you at 
home this afternoon. I wanted to see you long ago!” cried 
Marjorie, her gaze fixed on the face whose delicate beauty so 
far overpassed her expectations. “ But I waited — I thought,” 
stammered the girl, for the first time since she could remem- 
ber feeling an excuse needed for her conduct — “ I thought, of 
course, Mr. Arbuthnot might ask me to call.” 

“ Who — Geff ?” answered Dinah, with a fleeting, shy smile. 
“Xo, indeed. Miss Bartrand. Geoffrey would not make so 
bold. He knows too well that I live retired.” 

Dinah’s phrases were certainly not those of the educated 
world. But Marjorie, looking open-eyed at the mouth and 
throat and golden hair, was in no mood to be critical. 

“ I have lived retired, pretty well from the time I married. 
My husband does whatever visiting is required of us.” 

“That is unfair to the world at large!” cried Marjorie 
Bartrand, drawing up a chair to the table, where wools and 
silks lay heaped beside Dinah’s patiently progressing canvas. 
“ Whatever hermit rules you observe elsewhere we shall make 
you break through them in Guernsey. I may look at your 
work ? What intricate shading! ” She scanned the mournful 


104 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


mass of Dinah’s stitches. ‘MVhat a labor of love embroidery 
must be to you! ” 

“ It helps pass the time,” said Dinah Arbuthnot. ‘^Wool- 
work fills up long hours that must else be empty. For I am 
not a scholar like you, Miss Bartrand, or like Geoffrey. And 
I only learnt the piano for two years at boarding school, not 
enough to play well.” 

“ Still, you do play ? ” 

Marjorie glanced across at a piano that stood open. A 
goodly heap of music scores lay on a neighboring ottoman. 

“ Not in such a public place as an hotel. The notes you see 
there are my husband’s. Mr. Arbuthnot sings, as I dare say 
you know. He was thought, once on a time, to have the best 
tenor voice in Cambridge. Some day,” said Dinah doubtfully, 
“ I may play just well enough to accompany him. Unfortu- 
nately for me, the most beautiful of his songs are in French.” 

Marjorie bethought her of Geoffrey’s accent, and was silent. 

“You will have good opportunities of learning French in 
Guernsey, Mrs. Arbuthnot.” 

“ Geff wants me to take lessons. We have a French waitress 
here in the hotel, but she speaks too quick for me, so do my 
husband and — and Mrs. Thorne. I only understand the sort 
of French we learned at boarding school — the sort of French 
the girls talked together,” said poor Dinah modestly. 

No books, no languages, no music; only cross-stitch, the 
counting of canvas threads, to fill one’s existence and one’s 
heart. And for life companion, thought Marjorie, a husband 
who frequented afternoon teas, who warbled “beautiful” 
French ditties, in a bad accent, to audiences of women on the 
level of Linda Thorne! 

This vision of Geoffrey, as a singer, added the crowning 
touch to the girl’s disappointment in his character. Through- 
out the brief, bitter-tasting epoch when her unwilling hand 
wore an engagement ring, she was accustomed to hear French 
sentiment in an English accent, and an English tenor voice, 
during at least three hours out of each twenty-four. At this 
moment the tinkling burthen of one frequent song came back 
with a sense of repulsion that was pain upon her heart. 

“ Si vous n’avez rien a me dire 
Pourquoi passez vous par ici ? ” 

She remembered how the.white hands of Major Tredennis 
used to rattle out the accompaniment of that song. She re- 


YELLOW-BACKED NOVELS, 


105 


membered the flower Major Tredennis wore at liis buttonhole, 
the last day he visited Tiiitajeux — remembered, when she got 
knowledge of his treachery, how instant and far reaching was 
her scorn. 

With what honesty did she now scorn all human creatures 
of the Tredennis stamp. How loyally would she put herself 
forward as Dinah’s friend, yes, although she must forfeit the 
reading of mathematics and classics with Mr. Geoffrey Arbuth- 
not as her reward. 

“You have not been here long enough to see much of the 
island. Of course you are fond of the country?” 

“ Well, I was country born and bred. Keal country folk, 
my husband says, set less store upon green fields and hedge- 
rows than the town people.” 

“ But you like being out of doors ? You will walk or drive 
with me sometimes ? I have a pair of Welsh ponies, capital 
at scrambling up and down our Guernsey lanes.” 

“You are very kind. Miss Bartrand, but I can’t quite give 
an answer. You see I should have to speak to Mr. Arbuth- 
not.” 

Poor Dinah colored with actual shame at the proposal. 

“ Now, to-day. Why are you not enjoying yourself with the 
rest of the world at the show ? Guernsey roses, I can tell you, 
are worth looking at.” 

“ I asked Geff, in joke, of course, to take me,” Dinah 
answered. “ But he was not polite enough to say ‘ yes.’ ” 

“Will you come with me?” cried Marjorie. “ As I drove 
in from Tintajeux, I was getting my courage up all the way to 
ask you this. I have no chaperon, and now that I am seven- 
teen, nearly a grown-up woman, the old ladies tell my grand- 
father it is improper I should go about without one. I, who 
know the island like a cat ! You would be doing an act of 
charity by coming with me to the Arsenal.” 

Dinah’s face grew irresolute at this piece of special plead- 
ing. She crossed to the window, and looked with wistful 
eyes up the street. She recalled the group which had passed 
along, a quarter of an hour before. She heard Gaston’s voice 
again, saw the tiny primrose hands clasped round his throat. 
She thought of Linda Thorne’s rainbow-colored flounces, and 
of Linda Thorne herself. 

“ I should like to go.” The truth broke from her after a 
minute more of hesitation. “I was feeling duller than usual 
when you came. Miss Bartrand, and I do like a flower show 


106 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


above all things. We used to go to the Tiverton shows when 
my sister and 1 were girls. Uncle William, who lived bailiff 
at Lord Luf ton’s, would take us when the gentlepeople were 
gone. But that,” Dinah interrupted herself hastily, was dif- 
ferent. We were with Uncle William, we were in our place. 
I should not be in my place with you. Perhaps you are too 
young, Miss Bartrand, to see this. My husband is at the Arse- 
nal with his friends, and ” 

‘‘Wherever a husband goes is a place for his wife, accord- 
ing to my ideas of matrimony,” said Marjorie, in a careless 
tone, but with her veracious face aflame. “I will not hear 
another excuse. It will be a curiously pleasant surprise for 
Mr. Arbuthnot when he sees you in my society.” 

“ The ladies are dressed so elegantly,” objected Dinah, at 
the same time moving towards the door. “And I have no 
smart things.” 

“ Neither have I.” In truth, Marjorie wore one of the plain 
washed frocks, the sunburnt straw hat, that she wore on the 
moor at Tintajeux. “ What do smart things or smart people 
matter to you and me ? Dress as you choose, Mrs. Arbuthnot. 
You will look better than every woman in the Arsenal.” 

“ I had best put on black. My husband, fortunately, has 
lovely taste, even in ladies dress. He tells me black is always 
the safest thing for me to wear.” (“Black cachemire and 
silence.” Dinah remembered those were the requisites Gas- 
ton advocated, obliquely, the hint concealed by charming 
flowers of speech, on the solitary occasion when he introduced 
her to some female members of his family in London.) “I 
shall ask you to tell me. Miss Bartrand, about my gloves and 
ribbons.” 

Thus speaking, Dinah passed away through a side door, into 
her own chamber. For Gaston, with his knack of organizing 
daily life after the manner that best suited himself, had taken 
a compact little suite of apartments on Mr. Miller’s ground- 
floor. And Marjorie, left to her meditations, glanced around 
the parlor — in writing of Guernsey, and of Dinah, the old- 
fashioned word must be excused — for landmarks, that should 
point out its present possessors’ tastes. 

Dinah was not a woman whose affections tended towards 
ornament, in art, or in dress. Had they done so, Dinah’s life 
had probably been liappier. Her work-basket, with its out- 
lying heaps of silk and wool, was the only sign Marjorie could 
detect of feminine occupation. What of Dinah’s husband? 
Pipes and cigarette-holders of varrying patterns were ranged 
on either side the mantle-piece. A tobacco jar stood in un- 
abashed evidence on a table. An odor not to be mistaken 
clung round the draperies of the windows. So this man 
smoked, thought Marjorie irefully — smoked in his beautiful, 
refined wife’s living-room! Yellow-backed French novels 
abounded (French novels I must confess w'ere an abiding inspi- 
ration of Gaston’s genius). The neighborhood of the piano 


YELLOW-BACKED NOVELS. 


107 


was strewn with French songs. A volume of Greek poetry, 
lent to Geoffrey by old Andros Bartrand, lay on a bookshelf. 
In a corner by the door Marjorie discerned a rough briar walk- 
ing-stick which she recognized as her tutor’s property. 

As she looked around the room her impulse was to burst 
into tears. It was but an inn’s best parlor. You could not 
expect the perfume, the grace of Tintajeux under good Mr. 
Miller’s roof. But it was not Louis Seize furniture, or Pompa- 
dour cabinets, or Trianon rose-baskets, that Marjorie missed. 
To pipes and tobacco smoke her life with the Seigneur had 
accustomed her. Yellow-backed novels did not disturb her 
conscience. Within limits she could endure French songs. 
The room repulsed her because it destroyed every dream she 
had had of Geoffrey ! Without the Greek volume, she thought, 
without the briar-stick, even, her disenchantment had been 
less vivid. She had not been forced to remember him, to 
admit the lapse into bathos of her own ridiculously high- 
pitched ideal. 

But so the fact stood. ‘‘ One may be made a fool twice,” 
the girl told herself. ‘ ‘ First by a sweetheart, secondly by a 
friend. Happily Dinah Arbuthnot, not Marjorie Bartrand^ 
must this time pay the reckoning.” 

And the tears were in her eyes still. In spite of all disillu- 
sionment, her liking for Geff lingered obstinately. She 
thought she could never again be glad of heart as on that mid- 
summer night when she curtsied to the moon and wished a 
wish by her tutor’s side on the lawn at Tintajeux. 

It took Dinah Arbuthnot fifteen minutes — areal ‘‘ quarter of 
an hour of Rabelais ” for Marjorie — to put on hat and gown; 
fifteen minutes ere she could be sure her appearance would 
pass muster in the eyes of Linda Thorne. The best and sim- 
plest women infrequently dress for the other sex, or for the 
world at large, or for themselves. They dress for each other, 
oftenest of all for one especial feminine criticism which they 
have reason to fear. 

“ Shall 1 do, Miss Bartrand? ” Dinah peeped, her exquisite 
face aflush, through the half opened door, then she crossed 
the room to Marjorie; instinct, true as a child’s, informing her 
that in Geoffrey’s pupil she had found a friend. I want you 
to pick me to pieces, find as much fault with me as you can. 
Shall I do?” 

“ Do!” repeated Marjorie. 

And a volume of hearty admiration was in the monosyllable. 

Dinah Thurston, in her girlhood, had learnt dressmaking as 
a trade. Of dress as a difficult social art, Dinah Arbuthnot 
knew not the initial letters. Here, her husband was an unfail- 
ing monitor. Gaston had an artist’s knowledge of color and 
effect. He had the sense of fitness belonging to a man of the 
world. Dinah’s apparel might not accurately follow the fash- 
ion books. It bore the seal of distinction at all times. 

Thus, the “safe” black dress was absolutely perfect of its 


108 


A GIirrON GIRL. 


kind; plain of make as was meet for such a bust, such shoul- 
ders, as Dinah’s, but draped by a Parisian hand that knew its 
cunning. A ruffle of Mechlin lace enhanced the sweet white- 
ness of the wearer’s throat. A velvet-lined hat threw up the 
outline of the head, the waves of short-cut English-colored 
hair, in rich relief. 

“ You are lovelier than any picture!” cried Marjorie, look- 
ing at Dinah Arbuthnot with as generous a pleasure, surely, 
as ever woman felt in the good looks of another. 

‘‘Advise me about my gloves.” Dinah blushed and drew 
back at the girl’s frank praise. “ Here are cream-colored 
ones, you see, the same shade as my ruffle, and here is a box 
of long black silk gloves. My husband had them sent from 
Paris with the gown. Of course, the cream-colored are the 
dressiest.” Tlie tone of Dinah's voice betrayed lier own lean- 
ing. “ Mr. Arbuthnot warns me generally against light gloves. 
My hands, he says, are half a size too large. 8till for a flower- 
show ” 

“You must wear the black gloves, Mrs. Arbuthnot. No 
shadow of doubt about it! As you see, I don’t go in for dandy 
dress myself,” said Marjorie, “ but one can’t help hearing the 
whispers of the milliners. These long silk gloves are at pres- 
ent the one righteous thing to wear, in London and in Paris.” 

“ And no ribbons, no ornament! I have a gold necklace that 
looks nice on black, and ” 

“ You want no ornament at all. You must take our little 
world by storm just as you stand at this moment. Miller has 
some crimson roses in his garden. We will cut one as we pass. 
The black of your hat would be better for a single spot of 
color.” 

By the time Marjorie’s fiery Welsh ponies had rushed up to 
the Arsenal, four o’clock was striking. The rose-show festivi- 
ties were, for the weak and frivolous, at their culminating 
point. It was the hour when staid flower-lovers — sensible 
souls who came to see the real, not the human roses — were 
leaving, Cassandra Tighe among them. 

“ I am starting off to Tintajeux,” she told Marjorie, as they 
passed each other at the entrance. “ The Seigneur’s ‘Due de 
Rohan’ has taken a prize, and I must be first to carry the 
news to the Manoir.” Then, with a kindly glance at Dinah, 
“You have done the right thing, have paid your visit,” she 
whispered. “I don’t see the necessity of mixing yourself up 
with it all in public. Linda Thorne presides at the refresh- 
ment tent, and that wretched man is simply infatuated in his 
attentions. But the error is generous. Being a Bartrand, you 
can, I suppose, do nothing by halves.” 

“I consider myself honored by appearing with Mrs. Arbuth- 
not,” returned Marjorie, very low. “ I want to judge of that 
wretched man’s conduct at first hand, see facts alive, and ex- 
tract their meaning by the light of my own common sense.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 


THROUGH SMOKE-COLORED SPECTACLES. 

The refreshment tent was pitched at the most conspicuous 
point of the Arsenal, just within the gates. Here Linda Thorne, 
assisted by three or four white-muslined aides-de-camp, dis- 
pensed strawberries, ices and tea, liberal of smiles, but most 
illiberal in charges to the crowd. 

Gaston Arbuthnot hovered near, not engaging Mrs. Thorne’s 
attention, but with the air of a man whose freedom is nominal 
— of a prisoner on parole. The ayah had vanished. Small 
Rahnee, in a corner, was busily laying up a week’s trouble for 
her tropical digestion over a plate of stolen maccaroons. A 
swarm of well-gloved, well-set-up young gentlemen, subalterns, 
for the most part, of the Maltshire Royals, newly returned from 
Africa, clustered ornamentally around. 

“ Lord Rex,” cried Linda in a playful voice, appealing to a 
youth who stood behind her chair, a plain but ultra dandified 
youth, with a sunscorched face, sandy hair and eyelashes, and 
who wore his left arm in a sling. “ My dear Lord Rex, where 
are your thoughts to-day ? For the third and last time of ask- 
ing, will you run across to Madame the Archdeaconess, and 
press her to drink a second cup of tea? ” 

For Linda, a clever politician, never allowed the present to 
divert her mindfulness from the future. Belonging by birth 
and predilection to the extreme left of any society in which she 
found herself, Mrs. Thorne kept a firm grip, here in European 
coteries, as formerly on Indian stations, on whatever Conserv- 
ative mainstay might be within her reach. Her Guernsey 
mainstay was the Archdeacon’s wife. Linda was a member, 
under Madame Corbie, of cutting-out clubs, district-visiting 
corps, societies for persuading members of all denominations 
to change places with each other, and similar intricate philan- 
thropies of the hour and place. If, occasionally, serious circles 
looked with misgiving upon some little new escapade, some 
unaccustomed outbreak of vivacity at The Bungalow, Linda’s 
usefulness floated her. There was such a fund of sterling 


110 


A GIRT ON GIRL. 


worth in Linda Thorne ! So some old lady would say at whose 
house Linda perhaps, on the preceding evening, demure as a 
mouse, had been painting Christmas cards for the Oaribee 
Islanders. Such energy, such zeal for the weaker brethren ! 
Such a genius for collecting subscriptions, or organizing fancy 
bazaars! And then one must not forget the stock she came of. 
One must always remember what our dear flighty Linda’s 
grandpapa was ! 

Hence, perhaps, the leniency of the judgments. The old 
Samian ladies never forgot that our dear flighty Linda’s grand- 
papa was an earl. 

‘‘ Madame Corbie — tea!” echoed Lord Eex Basire, the sun- 
scorched dandy, absently. Ah, there she goes again. The 
prettiest girl, yes, by J ove ! the out-and-outest girl, every way, 
I have seen in Guernsey. Golden hair, a complexion, a flgure. 
.... Let me take the Venerable her cheering cup at once, and 
set me free to fly after my Dulcinea.” 

A new Dulcinea ?” asked Linda, with a glance as sweet as 
the cup she had prepared for Madame Corbie. “I thought 
Lord Kex Basire had flown after every Dulcinea in the Channel 
Islands, a long time since.” 

Lord Rex broke away without reply, causing a good deal of 
the Venerable’s tea to overflow by reason of his impetuous 
movements. But he was not set free again as quickly as he 
desired. 

Madame Corbie was what the Scottish bailie called “ a fine 
respectit half-worn sort of woman.” Her set of immediate 
worshippers, poorer cousins for the most part, would speak of 
her beneath their breath as so superior ! Madame Corbie never 
smiled. Madame Corbie never retracted a step once taken. It 
was her harmless boast that she had never read a novel in her 
life — as one would say he had never cut a throat, or picked a 
pocket. She would wear no black satin tliat cost less than ten 
shillings and sixpence (Guernsey currency) per yard. And she 
surveyed the moral, as she did the physical, world through a 
pair of smoke-colored spectacles. 

Even the Archdeaconess, however, had her little stock of 
human vanities and foibles. Persons of title, though they ex- 
ist in adequate number on the British mainland, are scarce and 
prized, like the pink flowering hydrangea, on these smaller 
islets. With the rectors’ wives from half a dozen country par- 
ishes, sitting around, neglected, it was a distinctly soothing sen- 
sation for good Madame Corbie’s unworldly heart to have Lord 


THROUGH SMOKE-COLORED SPECTACLES. Ill 


Kex Basire, the fifth son of a very impoverished Duke, in at- 
tendance upon her. 

“ A second cup of tea ? Why, Lord Kex and dear Linda were 
certainly conspiring to spoil us all! And might she, the Arch- 
deaconess, ask if there was such a thing to be had as a macca- 
roon 

“Too late, Madame Corbie! Lost your chance,’’ cried Lord 
Kex. “ That young limb, Kahnee, has been beforehand with 
you. I saw her devouring the last three maccaroons at a gulp 
just as Linda sent me off with your tea.” 

Lord Kex was forced to shout these words into Madame Cor- 
bie’s ear, for the band of the Maltshire Koyals were playing a 
forcible, much kettle-drummed polka, not twenty feet distant, 
so his attentions, even to the obtuse perceptions of country 
rectors’ wives, must be unmistakably marked. 

Sadly unwholesome diet, to be sure. But poor Linda 
Thorne is so indiscreet in minor matters. You agree with me, 
do you not. Lord Kex ? Nothing more sadly indigestible for a 
young child’s stomach than maccaroons ? ” 

Lord Kex Basire heard her not. It may be doubted whether 
Lord Kex heard the horns and kettle-drums as they echoed 
resonantly from the Arsenal walls. He was absorbed in the 
vision of a distant lovely head, poised flower-like on a white 
throat, its waves of amber hair set oft; against the soft velvet of 
a Kubens hat. No other interest existed on our planet at that 
moment for Lord Kex Basire. 

He was a man who from his birth upward had followed the 
desire of the hour, for evil or for good ; mainly, not for good. 
His desire now was to become acquainted with the exquisitely 
pretty girl whom his eyes pursued. Bluntly abandoning the 
question (from a physiological side) of maccaroons, he ad- 
dressed himself to the Archdeaconess. Did Madame Corbie — 
the polka by now had stopped, Lord Kex could ask his ques- 
tion without a shout — did Madame Corbie know the name of 
the girl who was walking with Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux ? 
“ Golden-haired girl — straight features, the loveliest complex- 
ion in the world,” added Loixr Kex, with the frankness of a 
momentarily real feeling. 

“ It will be my husband’s cousin once removed, Ella Corbie 
of La Hauterive,” observed Madame Corbie blandly. ^‘The 
Hauterive yellow roses are fine this year. I have not a word 
to say against their ^ Celine Forestier.’ But in my poor opin- 
ion the Archdeacon’s ‘Marechal Niel’ ought to have taken the 


112 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


prize. Yes, yes,’’ — Madame Corbie gazed through her smoked 
spectacles into the perspective of history — ‘‘Ella Corbie is still 
nice looking. I remember her, dressed for her first evening 
party more than a dozen years ago, and now ” 

“ My dear Madame Corbie! I beg a thousand pardons, your 
cup is empty — allow me to set it down,” interrupted Lord Hex 
Basire. 

For at this precise moment the perfect features, the lovely 
complexion, were again setting towards him in the crowd. 

But Madame Corbie, the head of our local society, rose to the 
occasion, and to her feet. 

“ Let me have a good look. Lord Kex, and if it is my cousin 
Ella I will introduce you to her. A young lady walking, you 
say, with Marjorie Bartrand ? That is certainly most unlike 
Ella! The Hauterive family keep so exclusively to themselves. 
Still ” 

“There they are — coming this way, by Jove!” cried Lord 
Kex breathlessly. “You see the girl I mean ? Splendid girl 
in black — lace ruffle — a red rose lying on her hair ? ” 

Madame Corbie looked through her smoke-colored glasses 
straight. Then she looked through her smoke-colored glasses 
obliquely edgewise. Then she pushed them high away on her 
ample forehead, and gazed stoically upward in the broad light 
of the merry June day. 

“ The person,” she pronounced, with awful solemnity, “ who 
is walking with Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux does not belong 
to this island.’’ 

And so speaking, and with the folds of her satin doing credit 
to the price paid for them, Madame Corbie there, in full pres- 
ence of the inferior clergy’s wives, sat down. 

“Ah! I thought not. Thought I had never seen such a 
pretty woman in the place,” observed Lord Kex, addressing 
his own consciousness, rather than the ill-pleased ears of the 
Archdeaconess. “ What are the odds I don’t get properly in- 
troduced and properly snubbed before another quarter of an 
hour is over! ” 

As a preliminary step. Lord Kex rushed back to the refresh- 
ment tent, Madame Corbie’s tea-cup, his ostensible excuse, 
lie threw himself on Linda Thorne’s ambiguous sympathy. 

“ Mrs. Thorne, you know all about every one, by fine natural 
discernment. I’ve heard you say so, a hundred times. Who is 
this wonderful girl in black that Marjorie Bartrand is walking 
about with ? ” 


THllOUGU SMOKE-COLORED SPECTACLES. 113 


A suppressed smile lurked round Linda Thorne’s thin lips. 

“ Let us give Mr. Arbuthnot the task of learning her pedi- 
gree. It is an act of charity, always, to find work for idle men. 
Mr. Arbuthnot,” she turned to Gaston, “ I want you to find 
out something for the peace of Lord Rex Basire’s mind and of 
my own existence. Who is this wonderful girl in black who is 
walking about the Arsenal grounds with Marjorie Bartrand ? ” 

“If I were of a brave disposition I would go myself,” said 
Lord Rex, when Gaston had sauntered placidly off on his mis- 
sion. “ But I am not. I am a coward, down to the ground. 
Peace at any price is my motto, politically and otherwise. 
To-day I am feeling more than usually nervous — not half ‘ go ’ 
enough in me to stand up under one of Marjorie Bartrand’ s 
snubbings.” 

“ I cannot say your modesty makes itself known to the world 
by outward and visible signs.” 

“Modesty — no! I understand you, madam. A man may 
have forward manners, but a faint heart.” 

Lord Rex Basire’s arm, in justice let it be spoken, got a bul- 
let through it in hot warfare. This dandified boy was in the 
thick of more than one African fight when clouds gathered 
dark above the English colors, was all but drowned on a never- 
to-be-forgotten night while attempting to carry succor to the 
wounded, left with their solitary gallant surgeon, on an aban- 
doned position. 

“ I tried once, at a militia review or something, to talk to 
Marjorie, just in the usual way one talks, not without success 
you know, to girls of her age.” 

“ And the result was? ” asked Linda. 

“She looked at me coolly — grand Spanish eyes of hers those 
are, bar the temper in them! ‘You are fresh from Eton, are 
you not?’ she observed. I confessed that Eton had known 
me in my youth. ‘ Talk about Eton, then,’ struck out Miss 
Bartrand, straight from the shoulder. ‘ Talk about cricket, 
football, boating, Latin grammar, if you learnt any. I will 
not,’ with a murderous flash out of her big eyes, ‘ listen to 
foolishness from any man.’ ” 

By the time Lord Rex finished this characteristic anecdote, 
Gaston Arbuthnot, with his usual expression of genial impene- 
trability, had sauntered back to the refreshment tent. Pick- 
ing up Rahnee, he asked the child what ailed her ? For Rah- 
nee’s face, sickly at all times, wore a look and hue forlornly 
out of keeping-with the bravery of her attire. 

8 


114 


A Gin TON GIRL. 


‘‘What in the world has befallen the infant, Mrs. Thorne.^ 
Her complexion is of the lively arsenic green the doctors for- 
bid us to use in wall papers.” 

“ Kahnee ! mamma’s own darling pet, what is the matter ? ” 
cried Linda, suddenly recalled to the fact of her darling’s 
existence. 

“ Me eat matazoons. Bad matazoons! ” whimpered Kahnee, 
with the tender conscience, the quick physical repentance of 
her age. 

“ That is a wise little Kahnee,” said Gaston Arbuthnot, kiss- 
ing her. “Kight morality. Pitch into our pleasures the 
moment our pleasures begin to pitch into us.” 

“Have you seen her?” exclaimed Lord Kex. “This kind 
of trifling, remember, may be fun to all of you. It’s stretched 
high above a joke to me. A tall fair girl, dressed in 
black ” 

“With a crimson rose in her hair,” added Linda, “and 
walking with Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux.” 

“Well, yes,” Gaston admitted in the lapses of whispered 
consolation to poor Kahnee, “ I have seen her.” 

“And who is she?” exclaimed Linda Thorne. “I am 
almost as curious as Lord Kex. Have you discovered this new 
Dulcinea’s name ? ” 

“ Her name is Dinah Arbuthnot,” replied Gaston cheerfully. 
“Yes, Mrs. Thorne, incredulous though I know you feel, the 
wonderful girl in black, and who is walking with Miss Bar- 
trand of Tintajeux, is — my wife.” 

Lord Kex sank in an attitude of despair, half mock, half 
genuine, upon the nearest bench. 


CHAPTER XIY. 


BROUGHT UP BY THE JESUITS. 

Dinah Arbuthnot had been more than ’woman could she 
have run the gauntlet of this Guernsey rose-show unconscious 
of her success. 

But admiration to Dinah was no new thing. As a girl, sh^ 
never went through that chrysalis or ugly-duckling stage, the 
remembrance of which to many women puts an edge on after 
triumphs. Heads were turning after her to-day, she saw, just 
as heads used to turn when she was a baby, toddling along 
the Devonshire lanes, or a slim maid, walking in the procession 
of “young ladies’’ from Tiverton boarding school. She had 
known, since she knew anything, that she was beautiful, and 
rated beauty at a pathetically low standard. 

Thanks to Roseleaf tint, or well-cut features, a sweetheart’s 
fancy can easily be won. Who should say that cleverness, 
knowledge of the world, tact, are not the solid gifts that bring 
happiness, the qualities that might chain a husband — wearied, 
say, after modelling from hired beauty — to his own fireside? 

“If you do not object. Miss Bartrand, I would like to find 
some place where we could rest away from the crowd a little.” 
Bent upon displaying their friendship before the Samian 
world, Marjorie had by this time paraded her companion 
bravely throughout the length and breadth of the Arsenal. 
“ My husband has seen me. He is in the tent near the en- 
trance, the tent where Mrs. Thorne is serving refreshments. 
As Mr. Arbuthnot does not come forward to m^et us, I am 
afraid he is displeased.” 

“ Displeased? That is a great idea,” cried headstrong Mar- 
jorie. “Put all the blame on me. I think I shall be strong 
enough to bear the brunt of Mr. Arbuthnot’ s wrath, if I rest 
myself well first! ” 

They succeeded in finding a bench, withdrawn somewhat 
from the crowd, yet within sight of the stall at which Linda 
presided. Here Dinah could pluck up her drooping courage, 
while Marjorie communed scornfully in her heart as to the 


116 


A GIliTON GIJRL. 


pitiful weakness of married women in general, and of this 
most neglected, most mistaken married woman in particular. 
Their seclusion lasted for two or three minutes only. Then a 
blush started up into Dinah’s cheek, vivid, bashful, such as a 
girl’s face might wear on catching sight unexpectedly of her 
lover, for she saw Gaston approaching. At his side was a 
very dandily dressed, sun-tanned youth, his arm in a sling; a 
youth whom, as yet, Dinah Arbutlinot knew not. 

‘‘He is coming! Miss Bartrand, 1 look to you to smooth 
things over. Just say you pressed me to come to the show, 
and I refused at first, and ” 

“ I will say everything that can decently be compressed into 
one act of contrition.” Marjorie’s tone was fraught with 
ironical seriousness. “ But your eyes are better than mine, 
Mrs. Arbutlinot. A guilty conscience perhaps sharpens the 
external senses. I am looking with the best of my seeing 
power over the whole Arsenal. I see no Mr. Arbutlinot.” 

“ Then his companion must stand in the way, the light- 
haired gentleman with a plain-like reddish face,” whispered 
Dinah, “ and who wears his left arm in a sling.” 

“That is our popular hero, Lord Rex Basire, newly returned 
from South African fighting, and as proud of his gunshot 
wound as a foolish girl might be of her first conquest.” 

“Well, and there is my husband walking with him.” 

“ Your husband I Mrs. Arbutlinot ? ” 

Marjorie’s world was reeling. A possibility — she knew not 
of what — a wild and passionate hope trembled on the outside 
edge of her thoughts. 

“ Perhaps I am not a fair judge,” murmured Dinah, the two 
young men having been arrested on their road by that incor- 
rigible button-seizer. Doctor Thorne, “but, to my mind, Gas- 
ton must always be the most noticeable man in any company 
he enters, no matter how high that company may be.” 

“ Gaston ? ” 

Marjorie Bartrand was in a state of such bewilderment that 
the echoing of Dinah Arbutlinot’ s words seemed about as 
great originality in the way of speech as she was mistress of. 

“Geoffrey must have sounded my husband’s praises to you 
pretty often. That is a right good point of poor Geff’s, his 
love and admiration for Gaston. At Cambridge he was called 
the handsome American. I know it,” said Dinah with earnest- 
ness which became those sweet lips of hers mightily, “because 
Aunt Susan had relations in the town, on Market Hill, you 


BROUGHT UP BY THE JESUITS. 


117 


know. Before my marriage we used to hear something flat- 
tering of Gaston every day. It is the same in London. The 
tailors will give him any credit. I believe they would make 
his coats gratis, so long as they got his promise to wear 
them.” 

And Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthiiot ? ” It cost Marjorie no small 
effort just then to force Geff’s name from her lips. “ What 
relationship is there between him and you ? ” 

Geoffrey is our first cousin. His father and my husband’s 
died, both of them, when their children were young. Gaston 
has always been Geoffrey’s good genius.” In saying this, 
Dinah believed herself to be enunciating truth, clear as crystal. 
“ They did not meet as boys. Geoffrey spent his young years 
in a gloomy city school. My husband was brought up — you 
can tell it, they say, by his accent — in PaGs. When they came 
together in Cambridge nothing could be more different than 
their positions. Poor Jeff, a scholar at John’s, was forced to 
work, without amusements, almost without friends, for his 
Tripos, while Gaston ” 

“ Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot had livelier things than work to 
think about,” suggested Marjorie, as Gaston’s wife paused. 

“ He was clever enough to come out first in any Tripos he 
had read for. But his friends would not let him read. He 
was sought after, popular,” said Dinah with a sigh, “just as 
you see him now. However, that made no difference for Geff. 
Gaston treated him like a younger brother, always. He does 
so now. I have grown myself to think of Geoffrey as of a 
brother.” 

She stopped short, for Gaston Arbuthnot and Lord Kex 
Basire were now within hearing distance ; Doctor Thorne, ad- 
hesive as goose-grass, addressing them, by turns, as he fol- 
lowed, with his nimble limp, in their steps. 

“ Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot, you must grant me my postulate.” 
Doctor Thorne packed up all of nature or of books, chiefly of 
books, that came within his reach, in little neatly labelled 
comprehensible forms, dilettante demonstrations of the uni- 
verse ready for his own daily use and the misery of his fellows. 
“ Grant, as a postulate, that the magnitudes we call molecules 
are realities, and the rest follows as a necessary deduction. 
Let us look around us at this moment. Evolution teaches us 
that these bright blooms we behold actually come into being 
througli the color-sense of insects; and, and — Lord Rex Ba- 
sire! You, I am sure, are fascinated by the subject! ” 


118 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


Lord Kex had not heard a syllable. Breaking away from 
Doctor Thorne. Lord Kex stood still, his eyes pointedly avoid- 
ing Dinah’s face. Gaston, meanwhile, his hat held low, after 
the fashion of Broadway or the Boulevards, was saluting the 
two ladies, making Marjorie Bartrand’s acquaintance, and jest- 
ing amicably with Dinah as to the march she had stolen ux)on 
himself and an unexpectant Samian world. 

When two or three minutes had passed. Lord Rex gave evi- 
dence of his presence. Coming forward, he delivered a set 
little compliment to Marjorie Bartrand on the Seigneur’s roses. 
It was a source of agreeable satisfaction to Lord Kex Basire 
that the Due de Rohan ” should have taken a first prize. He 
would like 

“ The Seigneur’s dark roses have taken a prize every June 
show for the last quarter of a century,” Marjorie interrupted 
him cruelly. When once we, islanders, flower-show judges 
included, get into a safe groove, we keep there.” 

‘‘What an improving place Guernsey must be to live in ! ” 
Gaston Arbutlinot remarked. “ I have been trying vainly 
through the best years of my life to keep in safe grooves.” 

“ To A:eep in safe grooves!” repeated Marjorie, with rather 
stinging emphasis. “ You would need to get into them first, 
would you not ? ” 

“ You are severe. Miss Bartrand.” Gaston came over to the 
girl’s side. “ And I like it. Severity gives me a new sensa- 
tion. Now I am going to ask a favor which I can tell before- 
hand you will grant. I want you to show me these conquering 
Tintajeux roses. Tintajeux is not an unknown name to us.” 

Gaston added this last clause in a lower key; then watched 
to note how much the color would vary on her ever-varying 
face. 

Lhider any other circumstances than the present ones Mar- 
jorie would, I think, have selected Gaston Arbutlinot as the 
type of human creature least to be encouraged under heaven. 
Was he not obtrusively good-looking, a popularity man, a 
dandy for whom Bond Street tailors would be content, as a 
flesh-and-blood block, a living advertisement, to stitch gratis ? 
Was he not a coolly neglectful husband, a pleasure-seeker, a 
frequenter of the afternoon teas of frivolous, attention-loving 
women ? 

But in her rush of joyous surprise, of contradictory relief, 
in her gratitude to him for not being Geoffrey, the girl was 
ready to extend a hand of hearty friendship to Dinah’s hus- 


BROUGHT UP BY THE JESUITS. 


119 


band — during the first half hour of their acquaintance, at all 
events. 

‘‘You wish to see the Tintajeux roses? Come, then, and 
let me play show-woman. Unfortunately,” Marjorie added, 
“I don’t know in which quarter of the globe the ‘Due de 
Kohan ’ lives.” 

“I believe lean guide you. I know the whereabouts of 
every stall in the Arsenal.” 

And Lord Rex neatly afiixed himself to the party as Marjo- 
rie and Dinah rose. 

Dinah’s breath came short. She knew instinctively how the 
eyes of this pale-haired, sunburnt youth avoided her face, and 
in that avoidance read the fact of his admiration. She di- 
vined that Lord Rex’s intention was to walk at her side. She 
foresaw, with terror, the necessity of conversation. 

Gaston Arbuthnot gave his wife a quick comprehensive 
look — Lord Chesterfield embodied in a glance ! Then he went 
through a brief, informal word of introduction. 

“ Lord Rex Basire, my wife. I fancied, Dinah, that you and 
Basire had met already. Now, Miss Bartrand, let us make an 
exploring tour of the Arsenal. We shall reach the Seigneur’s 
dark roses, sooner or later. I look to you,” Gaston added, 
“ for enlightenment as to some of the human elements of the 
show.” 

Marjorie’s mood was abundantly bright; the “ enlighten- 
ment ’’was not slow of coming. Her prattle, with its brisk 
bitterish flavor, amused Gaston as he would have thought it 
impossible to be amused by any classico-mathematical girl ex- 
tant. As they passed the bench that still supported Madame 
the Archdeaconess’s sacerdotal weight, Marjorie broke into a 
laugh — that hearty, human, unmistakable laugh of hers! For 
Doctor Thorne stood beside the great female pillar of the 
Church, delivering an oration in his most verbose little man- 
ner, to which not only the Archdeaconess, but the wives of 
the inferior clergy, listened wfith respect. And Marjorie’s quick 
ear had caught his text. 

“ One ought not to laugh at our betters, Mr. Arbuthnot, 
ought one ? ’ ’ 

Asking this, Marjorie looked gravely up in Gaston’s face. 

“ It is so written in the copy-books, Miss Bartrand. For my 
part, I think the greatest good a man ever does his fellows is 
when he furnishes them, consciously or unconsciously, with 
materials for farce.” 


120 


A GIB TON GIRL. 


‘‘At least, one should not laugh loud enough to be heard 

“ I think you ought to laugh very often, and loud enough 
for all the world to hear! ” replied Gaston. 

“ Doctor Thorne is too much for me; 1 have an old ‘ Sandford 
and Merton ’ among my books, and wiien 1 hear him talk, I 
think of Mr. Barlow moralizing at Tommy. Mr. Barlow 
turned scientist. ‘ Grant as a postulate that the magnitudes we 
call molecules are realities . . . ’ ‘ Evolution teaches us that 

these bright blooms . . etc. Dr. Thorne’s flower-show 
speech! We had it last autumn with the dahlias. We had it 
in the spring with the tulips. I heard him addressing it just 
now to that poor small boy. Lord Kex. Mrs. Corbie is ortho- 
dox to the core. I suppose he will make a big jump, as they 
do over the words in plays, when he gets to anything so brim- 
stoney as ‘evolution.’ ” 

The crowd, as it happened, was setting in the direction of 
the Tintajeux foses. By the time Gaston and Marjorie had 
made their way into front places before the stand, they discov- 
ered that Dinah and Lord Kex Basire had parted company 
from them in the crowd. 

“ I brought Mrs. Arbuthnot here. It was through my per- 
suasion she laid down her cross-stitch,” cried Marjorie, “and 
now we have let her fall victim to Lord Kex. How wearied 
she will be of him.” 

“I am not so sure of that. My wife has the old-fashioned 
weaknesses of the sex. The sight of a wounded soldier is dear 
to her. All women, at heart, are thorough-going Jingoites.” 

“lam not ! I am an ultra, red hot Kadical,” exclaimed Mar- 
jorie. “As to Lord Kex— I believe his wound was well long 
ago. He wears his arm in a sling to get up sympathy.” 

“It will secure Mrs. Arbuthnot’s,” said Gaston. Then: 
“ What a world of good it will do my wife to have been here,” 
he added warmly. “ That is just what poor Dinah needs, to 
come out more, mix more with her fellow-creatures, brighten 
up her ideas; to lay down her cross-stitch, in short. That hits 
the nail on the head — to laydown her cross-stitch! It was 
charming of you to call on us. Miss Bartrand ! I take it for 
granted, you see, that you have called ? You heard of our ex- 
istence probably from Gefl ? ” 

“ I heard from Mr. Geoffrey that Mrs. Arbuthnot was stay- 
ing at Miller’s Hotel.” 

But Marjorie’s voice faltered. Her soul clothed itself in 
sack-cloth and ashes as she thought of her own error, of the 


BROUGHT UP BY THE JESUITS, 


121 


generous, delicate, motives which had prompted her — Pharisee 
that she was ! — to call on Dinah. 

Whatever Geff does, comes to good. He cannot take a 
mile-long walk without some man or woman being the better 
for it. Geif has a kind of genius for bringing about the wel- 
fare of other people.” 

At the mention of Geoifrey, every artificial trace left Gaston’s 
manner. The best of the man showed always, no matter how 
trifling the occasion, in the honest regard he bore his cousin. 

“Now, look, Miss Bartrand, at the way Geff is spending his 
time in this island! ” 

Where Marjorie had suspected him of easy-going callousness, 
of philandering in the train of idle fine ladies, of singing 
French songs, of putting himself on the social and intellectual 
plane of a Major Tredennis. 

“Six hours a week must, I own, be grudged to him — the 
hours he spends at Tintajeux Manoir.” 

“ Spare yourself the trouble of being polite, Mr. Arbuthnot. 
If you knew how I detest politeness! ” 

“But remember all his other hours.” 

The art of thought-reading was certainly to be reckoned 
among Gaston’s accomplishments. 

Within ten minutes of his introduction to this little classico- 
mathematical girl, behold him discoursing with cunning nat- 
uralness on the subject likeliest to interest her in the world — 
Geff’s virtues! “Remember how his days, often his nights, 
are really passed.” 

“Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot reads, does he not ? ” 

Marjorie gazed into the heart of a glorious Due de Rohan 
with interest. 

“ Geoffrey reads, as I,” said Gaston, passing into a lighter 
strain, “meant to read once. You look sceptical, Miss Bar- 
trand! There was a time when I had bookish ambition. Yes, 
I talked, like many a fool before me, of going in for two Tri- 
poses, and left Cambridge without a degree. But Geff has a 
gigantic physique, a real hunger for hard work. He simply 
does not know the meaning of taking holiday.” 

As they chatted, Gaston’s eyes dwelt with artistic satisfac- 
tion on the girl’s slender figure and hands, on the chiselled 
Southern face over-kissed by sea and sun for some English 
tastes, but pure, fresh, as the roses over which she bent. 

“ I am a sculptor by trade,” he went on. “ It might be truer 
to say a poor manufacturer of statuettes for the London 


122 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


market. Geff has told you how we get our daily bread, has he 
not 

“My tutor speaks of little — beyond my reading,^’ stammered 
Marjorie, still without meeting the penetrating glance of Gaston 
Arbuthnot. 

“ Well, even after work as light as mine, I find, ” said Gaston 
with a clear conscience, “ that amusement, varied in kind, and 
ample of quantity, is needful. The heartiness of one’s worK 
seems determined to a nicety by the heartiness of one’s play. 
Geoffrey takes his recreation just now, in the wards of the 
Guernsey hospital. There was a bad quarry accident the day 
after our arrival here ” 

“ I know,” exclaimed Marjorie, paling. “ The worst acci- 
dent we ever had at St. Sampson’s.” 

“ Geoffrey, I need not say, went to the fore as a volunteer. 
Between the poor lads in hospital, and those who lie, still, in 
the houses to which they were carried from the quarry, his 
hands are full. That is the way Geff recreates himself.” 

For a good many seconds Marjorie was speechless. Could it 
be that conscious weakness — weakness, in her a Bartrand — 
hindered the girl from trusting her own voice? Then, giving 
Gaston her profile, still, she turned brusquely aside from the 
Tintajeux roses, and from the discussion of Geoffrey’s qualities. 
She remembered her grandfather’s dinner-hour. The sun was 
getting low. It would be only human to search for Mrs. 
Arbuthnot, and deliver her out of the hands of Lord Bex. 

“We shall find them, perfectly happy, and eating ices,” said 
Gaston. “ Dinah’s is not such a critical spirit as yours. Miss 
Bartrand. Let us bend our steps to the refreshment tent.” 

Dinah and Lord Rex were all this time advancing, haltingly, 
monosyllabically, towards aquaintanceship. Gaston’s happy 
many-sidedness, his power of adapting himself, without effort, 
to the tastes and moods of others, were gifts in no manner 
shared by Lord Rex Basire. Dinah’s intelligence differed 
about as widely from Marjorie Bartrand’ s, as does placid Eng- 
lish moonlight from a flash of tropical lightning. 

Thus, starting as a cleverer man might do, along beaten 
tracks, the first remark made by Lord Rex was meteorological : 

“ Splendid day this, isn’t it, for a rose-show?” 

“ Certainly.” 

The chilling assent was not spoken for some seconds, Dinah’s 
education having failed to inform her that the smallest platb 


BBOUGHT UP BY THE JESUITS. 


123 


tude uttered by men and women, when they meet in the world, 
needs instant answer. 

As a rule, you see, one gets beastly weather for this sort of 
thing.” 

Silence. 

“ Festive gatherings, I mean, und so Welter. Speech-day at 
Eton was always the wettest day of the three hundred and 
sixty-five.” 

Was it, indeed, Lord Rex Basire? ” 

Dinah’s gentle nature prompted her to be civil to all created 
beings. She would be civil, kindly even, to this plain and sun- 
scorched boy who had elected to walk beside her, and whose 
eyes took so many covert glances of admiration at her face. 
In the heart of Eve’s simplest daughter, were such glances, one 
short quarter of an hour after introduction, ever registered 
as crime? Not only would Dinah be civil, knowing little of 
titles, and less as to their modes of application, she would fain 
give Lord Rex Basire the fullest benefit of his. 

He paused, and doing so looked with a straighter gaze than 
heretofore at Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife. She was surpassingly 
beautiful, fairer than any woman he had seen with his fleshly 
eyes or dreamed about in such soul as he possessed. Was she 
stupid? Not one whit for the higher feminine intelligence, or 
the higher feminine culture, did Lord Rex care. In society 
he held it Woman’s duty to supply him, Rex Basire, with straw 
for his conversational brick-making; hooks and eyes, don’t you 
know ! gleanings from the comic papers, hints at politics, easy 
openings for un-sen timental sentiment. A distinctly stupid 
woman frightened him. “ Makes one feel like being on one’s 
legs for a speech,” Lord Rex Basire would say. 

“You are looking forward to a long stay in the island, I hope, 
Mrs. Arbuthnot? ” 

At the italicized verb, Dinah’s eyes turned on her compan- 
ion with a vague distrust. Then she changed color. A rose- 
flush vivid as sunset on snow overspread her face. For she 
thought of Gaston. 

“ If you are a friend of my husband’s I can understand your 
wishing to keep us here.” 

And there was a smile on her lips. The stiffness of her man- 
ner began visibly to relax. 

Lord Rex for a moment was taken aback. Then he plucked 
up heart of grace. To see a married woman blush like a 
school -girl at the mention of her husband’s name was a new 


124 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


and puzzling spectacle to him He could scarcely flatter his 
vanity that he, personally, was receiving encouragement. Still, 
Dinah had smiled. And with the burthen of conversation- 
making resting heavily on him, he was glad enough to follow 
any cue that might present itself. 

‘Friend? I should think so! Best fellow in the world, 
Arbuthnot — and a man of genius, too; good-all-round sort of 
man. Never heard a Briton sing French songs as he does. 
Bather proud of my own accent.’’ As Lord Bex progressed in 
confidence, his speech grew more and more elliptic. “ Sent to 
Paris in my infancy. Brought up by the Jesuits— there were 
Jesuits ill those days, you know — till I went to Eaton. But 
Arbuthnot puts mein the shade, ra-f/^er.” 

“ Your lordship was brought up by the Jesuits! ” 

Side by side with many wholesomer qualities, Dinah had in- 
herited not a few of her yeoman forefather’s prejudices. At 
the word “Jesuit,” she regarded Lord Bex with an interest 
that had in it almost the tenderer element of pity. 

“ I was. You look doubtful, you don’t think the fathers 
could give one such a Parisian roll of the ‘ r ’ as your hus- 
band’s? ” 

“ Of that I’m ignorant, my lord. I am no French scholar. I 
thought of the Jesuits’ fearful underminded dealings.” Dinah 
gave a half shudder in the warm sunshine. “ I thought of the 
doctrines they must have instilled into you.” 

Underminded. From what sect or denomination could 
Arbuthnot have taken his handsome wife? That Dinah was a 
rustic “mixed up with the great bucolic interests,” Lord Bex 
felt certain. The Devonshire burr, the staid, shy, village man- 
ner betrayed her. What were her tenets? What sort of con- 
science had she? A Puritanical conscience, of course, but of 
what shade, what dimensions? 

He harked warily back upon the safe subject of Gaston’s 
songs. 

“ Ar])uthnot was singing to us magnificently last night. He 
was in his best form. Faure, himself, could never have given 
‘ A vingt ans ’ in grander style. And then he was so well accom- 
panied. The accompaniment is half the battle in ‘ A vingt 
ans.’ ” 

Gaston Arbuthnot, it should be explained, dined on the pre- 
ceding night at the mess of the Maltshire Boyals. He had 
dined at mess often of late, and on each occasion Dinah’s heart 
felt that it had got a reprieve. Dinah believed that dining at 


BROUGHT UP BY THE JESUITS, 


125 


the mess of the Maltshire Koyals meant, for one evening at 
least, seeing nothing of The Bungalow, and of Doctor and Mrs. 
Thorne. 

You have good musicians among you, no doubt. I know,” 
she observed, remembering long and not succesful practising 
of her own, “ that the accompaniment of this song is hard. 
But it has become the fashion for young men to play the piano 
lately.” 

“We can most of us get through a polka, played with one 
finger, or Malbrook. When I am alone,” said Lord Rex, “I 
execute the Marseillaise, with chords. No man in the regi- 
ment could play a true accompaniment to ‘ A vingt ans.’ ” 

“No? My husband played it for himself, then?” asked 
Dinah, unaccountably persistent. 

“Not a bit of it! A singer never sings his best unless he 
stand, head up, chest expanded.” Lord Rex dramatized the 
operatic attitude'as they walked. “ Mrs. Thorne accompanied 
Arbuthnot — deliciously, as she always does.” 

It was seldom Dinah’s policy to discover her feelings by 
speech. So much worldly wisdom she had learnt, through 
most unworldly forbearance towards Gaston. Her complex- 
ion showed one of its over-quick changes, her mouth fell. But 
she spoke not. That there must be deviation from truth some- 
where, she divined, with a bitter personal sense of humiliation. 
But where? She shrank from the possible answer to this ques- 
tion. 

A good-humored epitome of the dinner-party had been 
given by Gaston, over this morning’s breakfast-table, for her 
own and Geoffrey’s benefit. “ The usual guest-night at mess. 
Curious how precisely alike all mess dinners are. The En- 
gineer Colonel’s never finished commencement, ‘ When we were 
in the lines before Sebastopol; the Major’s tiger-slaying advent- 
ures in Bengal; the elderly Captain’s diatribes against Liberal 
Governments and enforced retirements, ‘ A man in the very 
prime — no, sir, a man before he is in the prime of life put on 
the shelf.’ And the Irishman’s story. And the Subalterns’ 
witticisms.” Gaston, I say, had enlivened the breakfast-table 
with his lively putting together of these oft-used materials. 
He had made no reference to the singing of French songs, or 
to Linda Thorne. 

Then Lord Rex Basire’s memory must be at fault. 

“You cannot mean last night. You must bethinking of 


126 


A GIBTON GIRL, 


some former time. Mr. Arbuthiiot dined with you at mess 
yesterday.” 

“ Of course he did. After dinner we adjourned — we, the 
favored few — as our manner is, to The Bungalow.” 

“ Where Mrs. Thorne played accompaniments for Gaston.” 

Dinah made the observation with mechanical self-control, 
hardly knowing what cold repetition of words this was that 
escaped her. 

“Yes; we had quite a chamber concert. A lot of rehearsing 
that accompanying business seems to want! Hardly ever drop 
in at The Bungalow of an afternoon without finding them at 
the piano.” 

Dinah knew a moment’s cruel pain. There was a proud, 
hurt expression on her face. She stopped short, involuntarily. 
Then : “ It would take much rehearsal,” she said, “ before I 
should play well enough to accompany Mr. Arbuthnot in pub- 
lic. But Mrs. Thorne seems clever nearly in everything. I 
wish Iliad her talents.” 

And she resumed her walk, and began to speak — the village 
shyness thawing fast away — about the flowers, and the music 
and the people. 

It became clear as daylight to Lord Rex Basire that his 
society was duly valued. 


CHAPTER XY. 


, A LOVE-LETTEK. 

When Gaston and Marjorie approached the refreshment stall 
they saw a picture which many a genre artist, in ink or oils, 
might have been glad to study. 

For there outside the tent, stood Dinah Arbuthnot, fair and 
flushed. She and Lord Rex were eating ices, as Gaston, the 
materialist, predicted. The western light shone on Dinah’s 
bright hair. It touched the rose she wore, and the outline of 
her lips and chin. Lord Rex, dutifully attentive, held her 
sunshade. An Archdeaconess with surroundings of inferior 
female clergy loomed large on the horizon. Nearer at hand 
was Linda Thorne, patiently enduring long stories of the tiger- 
slaying Major’s, while her eyes and ears were elsewhere. Sar- 
nian society, generally, in dubious groups of twos and threes, 
looked on. It was Dinah’s first step across the border of a 
new world. 

Gaston Arbuthnot seized the points of the situation at a 
glance. He played the part that fell to him with acumen. 
Towards Dinah his manner was simply irreproachable. So 
thought Marjorie, no over-lenient judge; so, from afar, thought 
Linda Thorne. It were premature to hint at any forecasting 
of storm in Dinah’s own hot heart! He insisted upon support- 
ing his wife's plate while she finished her ice. He contrived 
to bring her and Linda so far into friendly juxtaposition that 
at parting a chilly handshake was exchanged between these 
ladies. But he also was true to his colors. He had come to 
the rose-show in Mrs. Thorne’s society; in her society he re- 
mained. The last glimpse Marjorie got of her new friends 
revealed a perspective of Linda with sprightly energy pointing 
out distant roses to Mr. Arbuthnot, while Dinah walked slowly 
homeward from the Arsenal gates, Lord Rex at her side. 

Had the afternoon been one of unmixed good? Had her 
interference with the Arbuthnot trio brought about good afc all? 
Marjorie asked herself these questions as she urged her ponies 
to a gallop along the Tintajeux high road. That she had dis- 


128 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


covered a foolish error appositely, might be matter for con- 
gratulation so far as pride went! Had she performed a very 
generous or delicate action in bringing untaught Dinah from 
her cross-stitch, pushing her into the glare of public notice, 
obliging her to tolerate the attention of a man like Rex Basire? 
If unprompted by the Bartrand thirst for governing, she had 
left destiny to itself, had been content, as in old times, to help 
in the hayfield, or the dairy at home, might not her day’s work 
have been fruitfuller? 

Dinner had waited long when she reached Tintajeux, and the 
Seigneur was in the disposition most dreaded of Marjorie 
throughout the meal. He talked more than his custom, dis- 
played a genial and grand-paternal interest in her doings at the 
Arsenal. Tintajeux had taken a first prize, of course. And 
how did the Due de Rohan look among the baser herd? Was 
he well placed? In sun or in shadow? Marjorie, the Seigneur 
supposed, had scarce found time, among her numerous friends, 
to give a glance that way. 

‘‘I looked more at our roses than at any in the show,” said 
Marjorie truthfully. Were not her eyes fixed downcast on the 
Due de Rohan, when Gaston Arbuthnot talked to her of Geff. 
‘‘Would you believe, sir, that the Haute rive Corbies have 
taken a prize? I think the Archdeaconess would sooner have 
been cut out by any farmer in the island than by her husband’s 
cousin.” 

“No need to tell me the local tittle-tattle. On that head 
Cassandra Tighe has been a more than sufficient oracle. Bye 
the bye, witch,” with the memory of overboiled fish strong 
upon him the Seigneur turned his piercing old gaze towards 
his grand-daughter, “ Cassandra informs me that Mrs. Arbuth- 
not is an extraordinarily pretty woman; good, too, as she is 
pretty. Your tutor shows poor taste in dancing attendance on 
anything so vapidly commonplace as Doctor Thorne’s Indian 
wife.” 

Mar jorie Bartrand who, three weeks ago, had never changed 
color before mortal, was conscious, at this moment, of blush- 
ing furiously before the Reverend Andros. Still more did she 
quail under the eyes of Sylvestre, who stood, in his faded puce 
and silver, listening, with the unabashed frankness that char- 
acterizes servants of his age and nation, to their talk. From 
her grandfather all she need fear was a little searching banter, 
directed towards herself. Let the dramatic instincts of Syl- 
vestre be aroused, and he was capable of waylaying Geoffrey 


A LOVE-LETTER. 


129 


Arbutlinot — yes, and of inviting confidence respecting the 
most intimate family concerns at Geff’s next visit. It needs 
personal acquaintance with a Frenchman of Sylvestre’s type to 
realize how the passion for scandalettes, smouldering through 
locg years of solitude and disuse, would be ready at the first 
handful of fuel supplied to break forth anew! 

Doctor and Mrs. Thorne were at the rose-show. The pro- 
ceeds of the refreshment stall go, this June, to some sort of 
charity, so Mrs. Thorne of course presided there. But Mrs. 
Thorne is one of the people I never can find two words to say 
to.’’ 

“ Our solemn-eyed Cantab finds a great many more than two 
words, it would appear. Let me help you to a inerry-thouglft, 
witch. You have nothing but bones on your plate.” 

Marjorie i)icked her merry-thought, as she finished her din- 
ner, in silence. Over dessert, however, Sylvestre’s inquisitive 
face fairly vanished from the scene; she plucked up courage 
and spoke: 

“ We have been making nimble but ridiculous conjectures, 
sir. One could not well speak of this before Sylvestre. Miss 
Tighe made sure of the Arbutlinot family history, you know, 
and ” 

‘‘ xlvoid expletives. I know nothing, until it is your pleasure 
to inform my ignorance.” 

“ I mean Cassandra believed, from whispers she heard in 
Petersport, that Mrs. Arbutlinot was kept too much in the 
background. It would be a right and kindly thing, we thought, 
for me to call on her, and so — and so ” 

“Take your time, Marjorie; slur over nothing. We have a 
long evening before us.” 

“Well, sir,” desperately, “I called. And our solemn-eyed 
Cantab is not a married man at all. The name of the Mr. 
Arbutlinot who dances attend . . . who visits at Doctor 
Thorne’s house, is Gaston. He is a cousin of Geff’s. I — I 
mean of my tutor’s.” 

The Seigneur looked deliberately at his grand-daughter’s 
face. Then, as though politely reluctant to take further notice 
of her embarrassment, he lifted his gaze to a full-length por- 
trait, in pastels, of some bewigged and powdered Bartrand, on 
the opposite wall. 

“And why should we not speak of Miss Tighe’s mistake, of 
Mr. Geoffrey Arbutlinot’ s celibacy, before Sylvestre? Remem- 
ber the rascal’s Galilean blood — Sylvestre requires an occa- 
9 


130 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


sional bit of comedy more than any of us. And so you have 
been acting a charade, my love, solemn-eyed tutor and all. A 
very pretty charade, upon my word!” 

The Keverend Andros Bartrand laughed dryly. It was about 
the first time on record that he had addressed his grand-daugh- 
ter as ‘‘ my love,” and Marjorie was prompt to recognize latent 
sarcasm under the endearment. How terrible to reach old age, 
thought the child of seventeen, to read, to think, and yet out- 
live the power of loving, intellect surviving heart by many a 
year, as bodily strength in the end must survive all. What 
had she ever been to him but a plaything! For, the hour she 
arrived at Tintajeux with her tempers, her four-year old 
tongue, her foreign ways, the necessity of keeping a kitten to 
gambol before the Seigneur’s study fire had possibly been done 
away with. Just that! She had diverted him. At the pres- 
ent day she might be picturesque, shed the pleasing charm of 
youth upon his lawn and dinner-table. She understood the 
arrangement of his books. She could dust his library to 
admiration. And she was not afraid of him! (Marjorie 
omitted this, the leading clause, from her mental summing-up 
of personal virtues. ) She was not afraid of him ! When did 
fearlessness fail of carrying weight with a cold, strong nature 
like the Seigneur’s? Though lier color went and came, 
though her lips quivered under his irony,. the girl was not 
afraid of him at this moment. 

“ I might have known, sir, that if I was distressed it would 
furnish you with amusement. That is our amiable Bartrand 
spirit, our way of showing sympathy with others.” 

‘‘ Distressed? You astonish me. Distressed at finding that 
an intelligent, studious young man is in possession of his free- 
dom? The charade, we may almost call it the Arbuthnot 
drama, grows mightily puzzling to me, a spectator. Let our 
worthy Cantab be bachelor or Benedict. What concern is it of 
ours? ” 

Marjorie rose from the table, with difficulty choking back 
her tears. I love gossip as little as any one,” she said coldly. 
‘^You introduced the Arbutlmots’ name, sir, so I chose to 
mention that the Thornes’ friend and my tutor are two dis- 
tinct persons. And I have no interest in Mr. Geoffrey Arbuth- 
not’s concerns! And if a drama is being acted let me tell you, 
grandpapa, that I, for one, play no part in it. Like yourself, 
I am a spectator only.” 

Her tone was high, but when she reached the school-room — 


A LOVE-LETTER. 


131 


friendly sanctuary in many a dumb pain of her childhood — ■ 
when she looked at the ink-stained desk, the piles of books, 
the window through which the China roses peeped, her humor 
changed. Marjorie stood, a self-convicted impostor in her own 
siglit. For she knew that she was not a spectator only in the 
Arbuthnot drama, that she was not unmoved by the discovery 
of Geoffrey’s freedom. “ Bachelor or Benedict, what concern 
is it of ours?” She knew, also, that under the Seigneur’s 
irony lurked wholesome truth. Pluming herself on her own 
strength, on the Bartrand immunity from vulgar human error, 
she had drifted into a position from which the pride of any 
simple village maiden must recoil. She remembered her airs 
of easy patronage towards Geoffrey, from the first evening 
when he walked out to Tintajeux on approval, until this morn- 
ing. VYhat could she have seemed like in his sight? Had he 
rated her as an over-forward Miss-iii-her-teens, a hoyden wear- 
ing her heart — ah, shame! — upon her sleeve? Or had he 
doubted her, worse humiliation still, as every honest man must 
doubt a girl who, under the convenient shield of Greek and 
Euclid, could lend herself to the small meanness of coquetry? 

She 'walked to the window, buried her face amongst the 
cold, swift-falling rose-petals, then looked out on the land- 
scape. Something strange had crept into its familiarity. 
There trotted Sylvestre, rake in hand, his livery exchanged for 
a fustian jacket, to the clover field. There were the farm 
buildings, there was the row of j)oplars, showing distinct 
against the sunset. The China roses gave out their faint evan- 
escent odor; the big vault of Northern sky was stainless. And 
here was Marjorie Bartrand, to all outward seeming the same 
Marjorie Bartrand as yesterday, but out of tune, for some 
queer reason, with her surroundings. The dew-smelling roses, 
the poplars, the farm buildings, yes, old Sylvestre himself, had 
been her friends through her whole span of childish life. 
With the new life that was awakening, with the stir of alien 
emotion in her breast, they were unsympathetic. Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot — what Geoffrey thought of her, what Geoffrey 
felt towards her — these were the questions burning in Marjo- 
rie’s soul, transforming her, as no lengthening of skirts, or 
plaiting of hair had ever done, from a child to a woman! 

Suddenly, a man’s quick step advanced along the gravel 
road that led from the side lodge to the Manoir. The step 
stopped; Marjorie heard her grandfather’s voice. Slie put her 
head forth tlirough the window, hoping, dreading that Geff, 
repentant after their half quarrel of the forenoon, might have 
walked out to Tintajeux — to be forgiven! In lieu of Geff’s 
stalwart outline, the diminutive figure of the country postman 
met her sight. The Seigneur, ready always as a boy for the 
moment’s amusement, was overlooking the contents of the vil- 
lage letter bag. 

“A letter for you, witch.” Clear, resonant, rang the old 
voice, as Andros Bartrand caught sight of Marjorie. ‘‘A let- 


132 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


ter, and a bulky one. The address is written in a hand that 
savors of the Alma Mater. The post-mark is ‘ Local.’ I am 
to open it for you, of course? ” 

“ If you do, I start for Spain to-night — this moment! ” cried 
Marjorie, with fine, Bartrand presence of temper; her grand- 
father meanwhile proceeding, in pantomime, to carry out his 
suggestion. “If you do, sir ” 

But the sequel of the threat remained unspoken. Away flew 
Marjorie through the low schoolroom window, away, without 
drawing breath, over flower border, over lawn, till she reached 
the Seigneur. A few seconds later, her letter— her first love- 
letter, whispered a voice in the white and girlish conscience — 
lay, with seal unbroken, between her hands. 

She could not read it here, under this open largeness of air 
and sky, with her grandfather’s searching eyes fixed on her 
face. She must heighten her pleasure, as not so many sum- 
mers back she was wont to heighten the coveted flavor of peach 
or nectarine, by eked-out anticipation. Not here, not in the 
schoolroom, peopled by commonplace remembrances of Sophie 
le Patourel, and all the long train of Sophie’s predecessors. 
In this ineffable moment (are not our mistakes the sweetest 
things we taste on earth?) she must be alone, must know that 
a bolt was drawn between her happiness and the world. She 
entered the house with eager limbs, sped up the stairs, light 
still with the brief flicker that comes between sunset and dusk. 
She sought the shelter of her own room ; a little white-draped 
room, where fragrant alder-blooms, flecks of foam on a deep 
green sea of foliage, brushed the casement, where you could 
feel the coolness from the orchards, where only the tired even- 
ing call of the cuckoo, the murmur of late bees, still awork in 
blossom dust, broke silence. 

“ Miss Marjorie Bartrand, Tintajeux Manoir, Guernsey.” 

Prolonging her suspense to the utmost, Marjorie ran over 
aloud each syllable that Gelf Arbuthnot’s hand had traced. 
Then, with fast-beating pulse, she opened the envelope, drew 
forth its contents, and prepared, delightedly, to read. 

The love-letter was written upon blue, most unloverlike fools- 
cap, and consisted of three words. “ Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s 
compliments.” Within, carefully folded, lay Marjorie’s waist- 
belt, intact, as when she looped it to his bunch of roses and 
heliotropes in the moonlight. 

So she had won obedience. Even in the light matter of keep- 
ing or not keeping a bit of ribbon, she had had her way. And 
her breast swelled with disappointment, the hot tears rushed 
to her eyes. In this moment Marjorie Bartrand’ s illogical 
heart owned Geoffrey as its master. 


CHAPTEK XYL 


A BASH EESOLVE. 

The strength, tlie delicacy of Geff Arbuthnot’s character were 
never better shown than in his present relations to Dinah. 

Weaker men pay allegiance readily enough to the passion under 
whose sway they happen to rest. Geff was loyal, with a fine, a rare 
fidelity to the love that had passed away. He was Dinah’s brother, 
always. And the story of Saturday’s rose-show, told him, late 
that evening, by Dinah’s lips, sutficedto fill him with a more than 
vague misgiving. 

He had wished often, thinking over the difficult question of her 
welfare in his rough-and-ready way, that Dinah could be forcibly 
saved from solitude and cross-stitch. Lo ! the rescuer was at 
hand. But that rescuer, Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s common sense in- 
formed him should be a very different Galahad to Lord Kex Basire. 
Acting on the moment’s impulse, Marjorie Bartrand had made a 
tentative effort at lifting Gaston’s wife into the fellowship of her 
kind. And the experiment was too successful. Dinah, so Geff 
divined, had scarcely taken one step in public, before the little 
hero of a lesser hour, the most popular man in his regiment, the 
most sought-after partner at the island balls, thought fit, the world 
looking on, to throve himself at her feet. 

And did you find pleasure in it all ? Did you for a single mo- 
ment feel amused to-day ? ” 

Something in Geoffrey’s voice suggested a sharper note of inter- 
rogation than was supplied by his words. 

Dinah and Geff stood together on the same spot of lawn where 
we first heard the Arbuthnot trio talking of sentiment while they 
breakfasted. Gaston was dining out, whether at the Fort William 
fort mess or at Doctor Thorne’s house, Dinah had not sought to 
know. Of what avail to ask for truth when you have once been 
answered with a fable, no matter how prettily that fable was illus- 
trated ! 

“ I was pleased for a time. Gaston showed no anger at my • 
coming. It amused me to hear Lord Rex Basire talking down, as 


134 


A GIRT ON GIRL. 


he thought, to my rustic understanding. Then without warning,” 
Dinah turned away; she looked at tliepale horizon line of the sea, 
“ I had a few moments’ horrible pain.” 

“You were ill ! ” exclaimed Geoffrey, uncertain of her drift. 

“Ko, Geff, no. I don't mean such pain as people consult the 
doctors for. The pain was at my heart — a sickening doubt of 
everyone — a feeling that I stood on one side and all the rest of the 
world on the other — a sudden despair of life ! Geoffrey,” she 
went oh, “ with the gay people walking about, and the flowers 
smelling sweet, and the music playing,— it did seem to me for a 
few seconds’ space that my heart must break.” 

“ And on which side did you range me in your thoughts ? Was 
I with you, or with all the rest of the world ? ” asked Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot. 

These half confessions of Dinah’s were no new experience to 
him. She never uttered an ungenerous suspicion of Gaston, never 
made a complaint as to her own neglected life. And still a kind 
of moral moan had of late been constantly in poor Dinah’s talk. 
The warm woman’s heart, ill at rest, jealous, with no wholesome 
work or interest to keep emotion subordinate, was always uncon- 
sciously, on the brink of betraying its secret. 

He looked with x)ity that could never tire, at her averted face. 

“ You, Geff ? ” she cried, putting on a brighter tone. “ Whj^ 
you were on my side, of course. You do everything good that is 
done for me in this world. Through you, for certain. Miss Bar- 
trand came all the way from Tintajeux to call on me.” 

“ Don’t give me credit on that score. Marjorie Bartrand’s do- 
ings are guided by no living person save Marjorie Bartrand. She 
had made up her mind to know you, had heard, doubtless, about 
you and Gaston among the islanders, and of her own free will 
sought you out. Count me for nothing,” said Geoffrey Arbuthnot, 
“in any action or caprice of Marjorie Bartrand’s.” 

“Had heard about me and Gaston! ” Dinah repeated his words 
with the preoccupation of morbidly strained feeling. “ I think 
one may know pretty well what that means, ^^o wonder so many 
people turned round to look at me at Satiirday’s rose-show.” 

“People turn to look at you generally, do they not, Mrs. Ar- 
buthnot ? There is as much human nature, depend upon it, in 
the heart of the Channel as in Hyde Park or Piccadilly.” 

“ That is more like a speech of Lord Rex Basire’s than of 
yours ! ” cried Dinah, with a laugh unlike her own. “ Throw in a 


A BASH BBSOLVH 


135 


lisp, varnished shoes, a waistcoat, and a double eye-glass, and I 
could believe it was his lordship, not Geif Arbuthiiot, who was con- 
descending to talk to me.” 

“ You must have put forth all your charity, have exercised a 
great deal of wasted patience, in allowing his lordship to conde- 
scend at all ” 

Chiefly through Gaston’s spirited character sketches over the 
breakfast-table, Geoffrey had long ago known with certainty what 
manner of a man Lord Rex Basire was. 

Instead of answering, Dinah stooped above a head of garden 
lilies, the dense white of whose petals showed waxen and spot- 
less through the gloom. 

“ I like the smell of lilies better than of all other flowers that 
blow ” — so, after a minute, her rich low voice came to Geoffrey; 
“ I can never smell them, nor yet lavender, without thinking of 
Aunt Susan’s garden at Lesser Cherton.” 

Where Geff first saw her! The garden amidst whose crowding 
summer verdure he stood at the moment when his youth went 
from him, when Dinah and Gaston, hand clasped in hand, bent 
towards each other in the level sunlight. At this hour, with the 
whispers of a new love stirring in his heart, Geoffrey Arbuthnot 
could not hear that distant time spoken of, above all by Dinah’s 
lips, without a thrill of the old passion, the old maddened, blind- 
ing sense of loss overcoming him. 

“ It might have been well for some of us,” he began, ‘Mf we 
had never heard the name of Lesser Cherton ” 

But Dinah interrupted him quickly : 

“ No, Geoffrey, I can never believe that. If it means anything, 
it must mean I had better not have married Gaston I I should 
have no hope, no religion — I should be a woman ready for any 
desperate actiop — if I thought that my life, just as I have it, was 
not the one God had cut out for me as best. The fact is, you 
know, I have been too narrow,” she went on hurriedly. “ Some- 
thing has been running in my mind all this evening — some idle 
talk of Lord Rex Basire’s that I may repeat to you another time ; 
and I began to see my conduct in a new light. From the day 
Gaston married me, I have been too narrow, far.” 

“ In what way ? Give me one or two specimens of your over- 
narrowness.” 

“ I have tried to make* the sayings of one class fit in with the 
doings of another. I have thought that right and wrong must be 
the same everywhere This was my ignorance. If I had taken 
up — well, with Gaston’s sort of opinions,” she added making an 
unsuccessful attempt at gayety, “ it might be better for me and foi 
him, too, now.” 

“ I differ from you,” said Geff, somewhat coldly. “ Right and 
wrong are the same in every class. It would be an excellent 
thing for your health and spirits to get more change, more society. 
Stop there ! Remain forever,” added Geff warmly, ‘Mn such 
ignorance as yours.” And indeed the thought crossed him that, 
at this hour, what Dinah needed was safer anchorage, not wider 
ship-room. “ Your happiness and Gaston’s would be wrecked if 


136 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


you attempted to rule life by any other ‘ sayings’ than your 
own.” 

But there was a goodly alloy of mild obstinacy in Dinah Ar- 
buthnot’s character. A given idea started, and she was slow to 
part with it. The recesses of her mind would seem to shut, with 
pertinacious closeness, over any decided impression, once made, 
and the key for opening these recesses could not always be found, 
even by Dinah herself. 

From whatever source the sudden conviction of her narrow- 
ness arose, another four-and-twenty hours showed Geoffrey that 
the conviction was genuine. Dinah had made some kind of 
compact with herself, not only in the matter of opinions but of 
conduct. On the following day, Sunday, it happened that Lord 
Rex walked home with Mrs. Arbuthnot from morning service at 
the town church. Invited by Gaston, whose easy hospitality ex- 
tended itself to most men, Lord Rex remained to lunch. He stayed 
on, long after Gaston’s afternoon engagements had taken him 
elsewhere. And Dinah, although her cheeks flushed, her spirit 
chafed, endured this, her first experience in the difficult duties of 
a hostess, without complaint. 

“ Lord Rex Basire kept his Sabbath, it seems, in Miller’s Hotel,” 
observed Geff, when the Arbuthnot cousins were smoking, one 
his short briar pipe, the other, a delicately flavored cigarette after 
dinner. Geoffrey’s own Sabbath had been kept in the wards of 
the hospital, full to overflowing with the survivors of the quarry 
accident. “No wonder Dinah confesses, to a headache. That 
lad’s talk, a nice mixture of slang and assurance, judging from 
the specimens he gave us at lunch, would scarcely be of the 
nature Dinah loves.” 

“ Oh, I don’t know. Basire can be very fair company when 
he likes,” said Gaston, with philosophic optimism. “ He is not a 
giant, intellectually. But in their heart of hearts, Geff, however 
unflattering this may be to you and me, women don’t care a straw 
for intellectual men — until they have been authoritatively labelled. 
The island ladies, from Madame the Archdeacon downwards, de- 
light in Lord Rex, title disabled arm, slang, assurance — all.” 

“ Imagine five hours of him at a stretch. That is about what 
your wife had to live through to-day.” 

“ Dinah is rousing herself, I hope and believe. It will do her all 
the good in the world to live through being bored.” This was 
said with amiable imperturbability by Dinah’s husband. “I trust 
for her own sake, poor girl, she is learning reason, beginning to 
discover there may be other music in the spheres besides that of 
the eternal domestic duo without accompaniment.” 

Geoffrey Arbuthnot puffed away at his pipe in silence. 

“ It was a great thing getting her to the rose-show. For that, 
Geff, I suspect, I must thank you.” Gaston gave a penetrating 
glance at his cousin’s face, “Miss Bartrand would certainly not 
have called on us but at your instigation, and through Miss Bart- 
rand my poor Dinah has been introduced — well, to Lord Rex 
Basire, an Open Sesame ! let us trust to the strictly guarded gates 
of insular society.” 


CHAPTER XYIL 


THE FIBST CRUMPLED ROSE-LEAF. 

Rex Basire showed no disposition to let his newly made ac- 
quaintance with Dinah Arbuthnot cool. Long before the hoiir for 
visitors on Monday afternoon Louise, the French waitress, entered 
the Arbuthnots’ parlor. She placed before Dinah a card, also a 
bouquet made up entirely of white and costly hothouse flowers. 
Just like the bouquet Gaston gave her on her wedding morning! 
thought Dinah, with a rush of bitter-sweet recollection. 

The Monsieur who was here yesterday, le petit Milor au 
moustache blond, demanded the news of Madame. Was Madame 
visible ? Should she, Louise, pray Milor to enter ? ” 

Dinah glanced with indifference at card and flowers alike, then, 
she rose from her work-table. Gaston Arbuthnot, it happened, 
was at home, putting the finishing touches to “Dodo’s Despair,” 
it his improvised studio. Walking quickly to the open window, 
Dinah, in a whisper, appealed to her husband. 

“ Gaston, how shall I get rid of Lord Rex Basire ? He has sent 
in his card and some flowers, as if flowers from a stranger could 
give any pleasure! He demands news of me, the French girl says, 

but that is too senseless. Tell me the civil way to — to ” 

“ Shut the door in his face,” observed Gaston Arbuthnot, look- 
ing up from his model as Dinah hesitated. “ Why shut the door 
at all ? The poor boy will be better off talking to you than he 
would be making useless purchases for young ladies in the Peters- 
port shops.” 

‘‘ But I am at work. I am counting off stitches for the forget- 
me-nots round Aunt Susan’s ottoman, and then I shall come out- 
side. I want no company but yours.” 

“ Basire will help you to count forget-me-nots. The very em- 
ployment he would delight in ! ” 

And, raising his voice, Gaston Arbuthnot called cheerily to the 
servant that Madame was visible. There was no time for Dinah 
to escape. In another minute Lord Rex had followed his hot- 


138 


A GIETON GIRL, 


house bouquet, his card, and the French waitress, into her 
presence. 

She suffered him to possess her hand for one chill, unwilling 
instant. Determined, after a somewhat confused and halting 
fashion, to amend the error of her ways, to instruct herself, as in 
a book, in the usages of Gaston’s world, poor Dinah shrank like a 
child from the initiatory chapter of her lesson. She had endured 
Lord Kex yesterday, in the spirit of martyrdom. But to-day, to- 
morrow ! Over what space between the present time and Sep- 
tember w^as her endurance to last ? 

‘‘ I was afraid, if I waited till the afternoon, you would be out^ 
Mrs. Arbuthnot. And I have a weighty matter to put into your 
hands; I — I — mean an awfully great favor to ask you.” 

Rex Basire, as garrison society knew him, was a youth weighted 
by no undue modesty, no obsolete chivalrous deference in his man- 
ner toward Woman. He really shone, little though Dinah might 
appreciate such shining, as he stood, hesitating— for a moment 
half abashed — before the calm coldness of her face. 

‘‘ You will forgive me for calling at this unholy hour ? ” he pro- 
ceeded as she remained silent. 

Dinah Arbuthnot glanced toward the flood of sunshine that 
rested on the flower-bright borders of Mr. Miller’s garden. 

“ Why is the hour unholy ? ” she inquired, with slow gravity. 

I mean an hour when you were certain to be busy,” said Lord 
Rex, approaching her table-work. Now I can see I am inter- 
rupting you, Mrs Arbuthnot, am I not ? ” 

He drew forward a chair for Dinah; then, after standing for 
some appreciable time, and finding that she neither spoke to him 
nor looked at him, he seated himself, uninvited. 

“ Awful shame, isn’t it, to interrupt you like this ? ” 

‘‘ It does not matter much, my lord. My time was occupied in 
nothing more important than counting stitches for a border— that 
dreariest form of feminine arithmetic,” Dinah’s lips relaxed, ‘‘as 
my husband calls it.” 

“Does your husband say so really ? Just what one might ex- 
pect ! All husbands are alike.” 

Modeling his clay outside, Mr. Arbuthnot smiled good-humor- 
edly to himself at the remark. 

“ Now to me — you mustn’t mind my saying so — lovely woman is 
never so lovely as when she is absolutely a woman ! Dead against 
the higher education business — girl graduates,— platform females, 


THE FIRST CRUMPLED ROSE-LEAF. 


139 


— you know tlie style of thing I mean. Only one out of my tribe 
of sisters, Yic, the eldest, works at her needle — my favorite sister 
from my cradle.’’ 

Kex Basire felt that he threw a shade of discriminative, yet un- 
mistakable flattery into this avowal of family preference. Dinah 
held her peace, having in her possession none of those useful 
colloquial counters which less uninformed persons have agreed to 
accept as coin. Rex Basire’s generalization about husbands 
lingered in her mind with unpleasant, with personal significance. 
Was it possible that Gaston’s coolness towards her had become 
matter of comment in the idle little world to which Linda Thorne 
and Lord Rex Basire both belonged ? 

“I work at my needle,” she remarked presently, “ because I am 
not gifted enough to do better things. If I had talent, a tenth 
part of ta ent like Gaston’s, I should not spend my time counting 
threads of canvas.” 

So the discriminative flattery had fallen through. Lord Rex 
tapped his exceedingly white teeth with the top of his cane. He 
searched diligently throughout the length and breadth of his 
brain for subject-matter, and found the land naked. His want of 
inspiration must, he began to think, be Mrs. Arbuthnot’s fault. 
These constant allusions to the absent husband were crushingly 
unsuggestive ; tended, indeed, towards irksomeness. Arbuthnot 
was a well-looking man enoiigh, of the usual American type, 
clever, possibly, in his way, — could knead up clay into droll little 
figures, and sing French songs without accent ! It was distinctly, 
not to listen to Gaston Arbuthnot’s praises that Lord Rex had 
toiled under a hot sun, and at this ^‘unholy hour,” from Fort 
William Barracks up to Miller’s Samian Hotel. 

He asked himself if Dinah were really as beautiful as during 
the past two days and nights she had appeared before him in his 
dreams ? AWth a world full of charming women, most of them 
disposed, thought Lord Rex, to value one adequately, were this 
particular woman’s good graces high enough stakes to be worth 
playing for ? 

Was she really, if one watched her, dispassionately, so beauti- 
ful ? 

Dinah set up her frame and, leaning over it, began, or went 
through the semblance of beginning, to count her stitches. In 
doing so the line of down-bent golden head, the sweep of lash on 
the pink cheek, the outline of throat and shoulder, were given 
with full, unconscious effect to Lord Rex. And the young man’s 
heresy left him. Whatever his other scepticisms, he felt, while 
he lived, he could never doubt more on one subject, the flawless- 
ness of Dinah Arbuthnot’s beauty. 

“ Please let me help you in your dreary arithmetic, Mrs. Ar- 
buthnot. Lend me a needle, at least, and give me a trial. I have 
only one hand to use, but I have been shown, often, how worsted 
work stitches are counted.” And indeed Rex Basire had had a 
pretty wide training in most unprofitable pursuits, “ Each 
little painted square of the pattern goes for two threads, does it 
not ? ” 


140 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


“ I am sure I did not know gentlemen understood about cross- 
stitch ! And Dinah reluctantly surrendered her canvas to his 
outstretched hand. “Your lordship,” she added, “will never 
make out the different shades of blue. This forget-me-not border 
is the most heart-breaking pattern I have worked.” 

Your lordship — your lordship ! Gaston’s face assumed an un- 
wonted liveliness of color as his wife’s voice reached him. 
Would Dinah never leave oft' talking as the young ladies talk 
behind the counters in glove shops, he asked himself.! Would 
she never learn the common everyday titles by which men and 
women address each other in the world I 

The clay was no longer plastic under Mr. Arbuthnot’s touch. 
He moved without sound to the window. He took one discerning 
glance at the two people seated beside the table, — Lord Rex with 
masculine awkward fingers solemnly parcelling out canvas forget- 
me-nots, as though his commission depended on his accuracy ; 
Dinah, a look of shy amusement on her face, demurely watching 
him. 

Gaston Arbuthnot took one glance. Then he put aside his 
tools, wrapped a wet cloth hastily around “ Dodo’s Despair,” and 
with a manner not divested of a certain impatience, prepared to 
quit his studio. Could it be — the question presented itself un- 
bidden — that a shadow of coming distrust had fallen on him ? 
The thought was absurd. He, Gaston Arbuthnot, distrustful of 
the gentle, home-staying girl, whose devotion to himself had at 
times— poor Dinah — amounted to something worse than a fault, 
an inconvenience ! That to-morrow’s sun should rise in the east, 
was not a surer fact than that his wife’s Griselda-like fidelity 
should endure to the end. 

And still, in the inmost conscience of him, Gaston Arbuthnot 
was uncomfortable. 

He had spent nearly four years of absolute trust, four golden 
years of youth, of love, with the sweetest companion that ever 
blest the lot of erring man. In this moment he realized the sen- 
sation of the first crumpled rose-leaf. Commonly jealous he 
could not be. His temperamenty the circumstances of his lot, 
forbade ignoble feeling. He knew that for a man like Rex Basire, 
toleration must be the kindliest sentiment that Dinah, with diffi- 
culty, could bring herself to entertain. 

It was not jealousy, not distrust ; it was simply the reversal of 
all past experience that disconcerted Gaston’s mind. It w^as the 
whole abnormal picture — the diverted look on Dinah’s face, her 
embroidery needle and canvas — her^s — between Rex Basire’ s 
fingers, that was so blankly unwelcome in his sight. 

If Gaston Arbuthnot ever in his life v/as an actor in a similar 
bit of drawing-room comedy, you may be sure the role chosen by 
him had been the one now played by Lord Rex. Some other fel- 
low mortal in a blouse, and with clay-stained hands, may have 
watched from the slips. It was Gaston who counted the stitches! 

He was not cut out by Nature to take subordinate parts ; and 
this his first little taste of abdicated power had a singularly 
insipid flavor to his palate. 


CHAPTER XYIII. 


HOW DINAH SAID ‘‘yES.’’ 

Rex Basire, meanwhile, counted manfully on. A hundred- 
and-tenfrom the corner scroll to the first line of blue ; and seventy 
six, either way, of grounding. Emboldened by success, he insisted 
upon filling in the yellow heart of a single forget-me-not. ‘‘Just 
as a souvenir ! ” he pleaded, contriving to get through the task 
cleverly enough. A twelvemonth hence, when half the world lay 
between them, he thought Mrs. Arbuthnot might look at the 
centre of this forget-me-not, and remember to-day ! 

“ I shall remember a length of filoselle wasted. Your lordship’s 
stitches must be picked out at once — they are worked the wrong 
w^ay of the silk.” Taking back the needle and canvas, Dinah 
began to put her threat into instant execution. “ A twelvemonth 
hence,” she added, “ I hope to be looking at something more inter- 
esting than woolwork. Most of my pieces get stored away, for no 
one in particular. This ottoman is for my Aunt Susan in Cam- 
bridgeshire. It will be a great set-off to her front parlor,” — Dinah 
admitted this with a tinge of artist’s pride ; “ but I am not likely 
to see it there. We have not been to Cheriton for four years, 
and ” 

“ Happy Aunt Susan! ” exclaimed Lord Rex, who was wont to 
be a little impudent without awakening anger. “ What would I 
give to have — not an ottoman for my front parlor — but something 
modest, a kettle-holder with an appropriate motto, say, worked 
for me by fair and charitable fingers ! ” 

“ By your favorite sister’s, perhaps.” 

Dinah’s voice was cold and clear as ice as she offered the sug- 
gestion. 

“You are in an unkind mood, Mrs. Arbuthnot. So unkind,” 
Lord Rex took up a pair of scissors and regarded them, solemnly 
as though they had been the shears of fate, “ that I feel, before- 


142 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


hand, you mean to say ‘ no ^ to everything I ask. I told you, did 
I not, that I had come to put a weighty matter into your hands ? ” 
Do nothing of the kind, my lord. I am unused to receiving 
favors from a stranger. Your flowers are very beautiful” — with a 
touch, Dinah placed the bouquet two or three inches farther from 
her — and I dare say your lordship meant it kindly to bring them. 
That is enough ! I live quite retired, and ” 

Stopping short, Dinah colored violently. At this moment she 
heard Gaston’s tread as he ran down the outer stone staircase. 
She knew that she was left alone with Kex Basire for just as long 
as Rex Basire might think fit to stay. 

“ But we hope to win a favor from you. The subalterns of the 
regiment are getting up a party for Wednesday, and we want to 
know if you will condescend to play hostess for us ? We mean to 
be original,” Lord Rex hurried on, not giving Dinah time to speak, 
and refuse. “ Instead of having a hum-drum dance or dinner on 
terra-flrma, we mean to charter a yacht — the Princess, now lying 
in Guernsey harbor — and carry all the nicest-looking people in the 
island out to sea.” 

Dinah’s eyes gave him a look of momentary but severe dis- 
approval. 

“ For this, a hostess is imperatively needed. Chaperonage, in 
its most venerable form, we can command. I’ve been spending 
the forenoon, I give you my word I have, in paying court to old 
ladies. Miss Tighe smiles on our project. The Arclideaconess 
does not frown. Of course we have Mre. Yerschoyle. But we 
want a great deal more than venerable chaperons. We want a 
young and charming lady to do the honors for us. Mrs. Arbuth- 
not, we want you ! ” 

Now Dinah’s nature held as little commonplace vanity as could 
well fall to woman’s share: though commonplace vanity had 
Lord Rex never, at this juncture, won her to say “ yes.” From 
pleasure, so-called, she had shrank, more than ever, since the 
taste she got of pleasure at the rose-show — yes, during the very 
hours when, with rash strategy, she had been planning to act a 
part in Gaston Arbuthnot’s world, among Gaston’s friends. 

But every human being, given a wide enough scope, must end 
by justifying the cynic’s aphorism. The resisting powers of the 
best man, of the best woman living, have their price, so far as in- 
significant mundane matters are concerned. 

No need to seek far for poor sore-hearted Dinah’s price ' 


HOW DINAH SAID YES,^* 


143 


Whispers of the projected yachting party had, for several days 
past, reached her, chiefly in fragments of talk between her husband 
and the other boarders in Miller’s Hotel. She knew that Gaston 
was an invited guest. She had an impression, based on air and 
yet, like many a jealous fear, not all foundationless, that Linda 
Thorne was to be the quasi-hostess, the graceful presiding influence 
of the hour. 

Me — you ask me ? ” she faltered, sensible of a blinding rush of 
temptation, and not lifting her eyes from the canvas where she 
had now effaced the last trace of Lord Eex’s handiwork. ‘‘ I 
should think others would be more suitable. I should think,’’ 
the blood forsook her lips as she suggested the name, that Mrs. 
Thorne ” 

“ Oh, we have decided, all of us , against Linda,” said Lord Rex, 
with his usual cool sincerity. ^‘Mrs. Thorne is the nicest woman 
going, on shore.” 

Of that I am convinced.” 

And she has been kind enough to murmur an experimental ‘ yes,’ 
though no one acknowledges to having asked her. (A suspicion 
goes about that it was Arbuthnot!) But Mrs. Thorne’s qualities 
are not sea-going. She has not the marine foot, as your husband 
would say. She and the Doctor will be of our party, of course, 
but Linda could never play the part of hostess for us. Oscar 
Jones took her and the de Carteret girls out sand-eeling — you 
know little Oscar, the one handsome fellow in the regiment ? — 
and Mrs. Linda was sea-sick straight through the jolliest night 
of May moonlight. You like the ocean, I am sure, Mrs. Arbuth- 
not.” 

‘‘ Yes, I like it. Years ago, when we had not Tong been married, 
Mr. Arbuthnot hired a little cutter yacht. We spent four weeks 
at sea off the coast of Scotland. They were the happiest weeks of 
my life.” 

Dinah said this with her accustomed quiet reserve. Yet, had 
Lord Rex known her better , he might have discerned a tremor 
in her voice as she recalled those far-off days — days when neither 
mistrust nor coldness had marred the first ineffable joy of her 
love for Gaston Arbuthnot. 

“ That is all right; I am a second Byron myself. The sea is 
my passion. It would have been a sort of blow — I hope you 
understand me when I say that it would have been a sort of blow 
— to hear you say you were a bad sailor.” 


144 


A GIBTON GIBL. 


Dinah, who never helped out a flattering speech, direct or 
implied, looked away from him. 

A suspicion goes about that it was Arbuthnot.*’ The words 
rang in her ears; light words, heedlessly spoken, yet destined to 
swell the total with which Gaston Arbuthnot was already too 
heavily credited on the balance-sheet of his wife’s heart. 

We may count upon you, may we not ? Arbuthnot has 
accepted for himself. Now we want your promise. If the 
weather continues like this we may rely upon seeing you on board 
the Princess next Wednesday 

You have not explained what seeing me on board the Princess 
means.” Dinah’s tone was evasive. Probably, thought Lord Kex, 
the puritanical conscience required time to collect itself! “ I don’t 
know, at my staid age,” she added, “that I should countenance 
you. What did you say about carrying all the nice-looking people 
in Guernsey out to sea ? ” 

Upon this slight whisper of encouragement Kex Basire entered 
voluminously into details. The proprieties — to begin, he declared? 
solemn of face, with the facts of greatest significance — the 
proprieties were set at rest. An undeniable Archdeaconess, a 
Cassandra Tighe (minus nothing but her harp), were secured. 
The de Carteret girls, and Kosie Yerschoyle, four of the Guernsey 
beauties regnant, had accepted. It would be a high spring tide 
on Wednesday, and theP9*mcess must start early to reach the Race 
of Alderney before the ebb. Afternoon would find them anchored 
off Langrune, in Normandy. “ Where we shall land, observe the 
manners and customs of the natives, eat a French dinner, take 
our little whirl, perhaps, in the Casino ball-room,” said Lord Rex, 
“and so back, a la Pepys, to our virtuous homes.” 

“ The scheme is too gay for me,” cried Dinah, with an uneasy 
dread of Gaston’s disapproval. “I never danced in my life. I 
hope — no, I am sure, my lord, that I shall never set foot inside the 
walls of a casino.” 

“ Not of a French casino, Mrs. Arbuthnot ? ” Lord Rex argued 
warily, still mindful of the puritanical note. 

“ Certainly not. A French casino! Why, that only makes it 
worse.” 

“ A French casino is an innocent kind of sea-side dancing 
school. Papas and mammas of families sit around. Small boys 
and girls exhibit their steps. Papa drinks his little glass of absin- 
the, mamma her tumbler of sugar-water. We go back to our 


HOW DINAH SAID YES:* 


145 


hotel, hand-in-hand with the babies, at ten o’clock. Except the 
Zoological Gardens on week days, I know no human form of dis- 
sipation so mild as a French casino.” 

^ I should have to meet too many strangers on board. I should 
be alone among them all. The only lady in Guernsey who has 
called on me is Geff’s pupil. Miss Bartrand, of Tintajeux.” 

Who will be invited to come, under your charge.” liOrd Rex 
adroitly left more delicate social questions untouched. “ Marjorie 
Bartrand would be rough on a chaperon, I should think. Difficult 
to say whom the Girtonian of the future would not be rough on ! 
But you, Mrs. Arbuthnot, seem to have stepped into her favor.” 

“ And is Geoffrey to be asked ? ” 

t “ Geoffrey ? Ah, to be sure — your cousin. Senior wrangler, 
was he not ? ” 

^‘Geoffrey took his honors in classics.” 

Frightfully ‘ boss ’ man, any way. Does not look as if he 
cared about frivolous amusements in general, still ” 

Lord Rex hesitated. Some finer prophetic sense informed him 
that Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s might be a name as well omitted from 
the programme of pleasure he was chatting out with such zealous 
trouble for next Wednesday. 

‘‘ But is the party to be frivolous ? I hardly understood that. 
No one loves the sea better than Geff. He will go, I’m sure, if I 
go.” 

This was said by Dinah with conviction. Through long habit 
she had come to regard Geoffrey’s obedience to her smallest wish 
as an accomplished fact. 

‘‘Notes shall be dispatched to Miss Bartrand and to your 
cousin without an hour’s delay. I am aw'fully indebted to you, 
Mrs. Arbuthnot. You can’t think what a load of moral obligation 
you have taken off my mind by saying ‘ yes.’ ” 

And when Lord Rex left Miller’s Hotel he was radiant ; a pos- 
sibility of Geoffrey Arbuthnot saying “yes” also, the one little 
shadow of a cloud that obscured next Wednesday’s horizon. 

On his return to Fort William, later on in the day, his road took 
him past the garden gate of Doctor Thorne’s Bungalow. The 
gate stood open, and Lord Rex sauntered in, as it was the habit 
of unoccupied ingulaP youth tO do, during the afternoon hours of 
tea and gossip. 

Small Rahnee and her ayah were picturesquely grouped upon 
a bright square of Persian carpet on the lawn. A macaw and two 


146 


A GIBTON GIRL, 


tame parrots gave a local, or eastern, color to the scene as they 
screeched from their perches among the garden shrubs. Within 
one of the drawing-room windows — bay windows opening to the 
ground — reposed Linda. Her dress was of embroidered Indian 
muslin, not absolutely innocent of darns, perhaps, for the Doctor 
retained so much of old bachelor habit as to be his own house- 
keeper, and poor Linda must practice many a humiliating economy 
in her lot of femme incomprise. Bangles, similar to Rahnee^s, 
concealed the outline of the lady’s thin wrists. Her black hair, 
worn in a single coil, revealed sharply the outline of her head, 
Linda’s one incontestably good point. The cunningly arranged 
shadow of a rose-colored window awning, if it did not hide, at 
least threw possible defects of complexion, suspicions of coming 
crow’s-feet, into uncertainty. 

Linda Thorne was not a pretty woman. Loi:d Rex, his eyes still 
dazzled by Dinah’s wild-rose face, felt more than usually cognizant 
of the fact. And still, with Rahnee and the turbaned ayah, with 
the macaws and parrots, the embroidered Indian dress, the 
Indian-looking Bungalow, Linda composed ” well. She formed 
the central figure of a Benjamin Constant picture, right pleasant 
to behold. 

A hum of animated voices was in the air. Three or four young 
and pretty girls Avere distributed, spots of agreeable color, about 
Linda’s sober-hued drawing-room. The prettiest of them all 
presided over a miniature tea-table drawn close beside the hostess 
at the open Avindow. And the burthen of everybody’s talk, the 
clashing point of everybody’s opinions, was next Wednesday’s 
yachting-party. 

‘‘We are to start at seven. Mamma heard it from Captain 
Ozanne, himself.” 

“At midnight of Tuesday. The Princess will be aAvay twenty- 
four hours.” 

“A W'eek, at least, Rosie! And Madame Corbie is to be 
chaperon.” 

“ I heard — Cassandra Tighe.” 

“ There are to be no chaperons worth speaking of, for of course 
— don’t be offended, Linda — we cannot look upon you as one, 
so ” 

“ So you are quite wrong, all of you,” exclaimed Lord Rex, his 
head peeping up suddenly across Linda Thorne’s shoulder. “Miss 
Verschoyle, will you giA^e me a cup of tea if I promise to set you 


HOW DINAH SAID YESN 147 

right in a few of your guesses ? A cup of tea and your protection, 
for I am certain to be well attacked.” 

‘‘ This stimulates our curiosity to the proper point,” the young 
lady answered, with a doubtful smile, but making place for Lord 
Kex at her side. “ At the same time, it is an admission you have 
been doing something rather less wise than usual. Do you take 
six or seven lumps of sugar in your tea. Lord Eex ? I never re- 
member the precise number.” 

Rosie Verschoyle was a bright-complexioned, dimpled girl of 
nineteen, with an exactly proportioned waist (of society), an ex- 
actly correct profile, the exact mass of nut-brown hair that fashion 
requires descending to her brows, and a pair of large nut-brown, 
somewhat spaniel-like eyes. Until Dinah’s advent Lord Rex 
thought Rosie the fairest among the beauties regnant, and was 
openly her slave at all the picnics and garden-parties going. Miss 
Verschoyle had not the air of encouraging these attentions. She 
seldom lost a chance of making Rex Basire’s vanity smart, and had 
been known to say that she positively disliked that plain, forward 
boy who managed to scare away really pleasant partners and mon- 
opolize one’s best dances. And still, throughout the whole island 
society, among Rosie’s more intimate girl-friends notably, there 
had been a growing suspicion for some time past that Miss Yer- 
schoyle would, one day, marry- Lord Rex Basire, 

‘‘ I take as many lumps as Miss Verschoyle chooses to give me.” 
He received the cup with mock humility from her plump, white, 
inexpressive hands. “ The sweets and bitters as they come.” 

“ Bitters — in tea ! ” echoed Rosie, opening her brown eyes wide. 

Steer clear of metaphors. Lord Rex. They really do not suit 
your style of eloquence.” 

“ Rosie, Rosie ! While you two children spar, the rest of us 
are dying of curiosity.” The admonition was made in Linda’s 
smoothest voice. Lord Rex, recollect your promise. You 
know, you are to set us all right. What are the plans for Wednes- 
day ? Why are we certain, when we have heard these plans, to 
attack you ? Come here, and make confession.” 

Lord Rex perched himself, obediently, on a stool near Mrs. 
Thorne’s feet. Then, sipping the tea sweetened for him by Rosie 
Verschoyle, with more trepidation of spirit, so he afterward 
owned, than he ever felt before the fire of an enemy, he thus be- 
gan his shrift : 

‘‘We have made due inquiry from the harbor master, and find 


148 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


the Princess must clear out as soon as the first English steamer 
is signalled. Will seven o’clock be too early for you all ? ” 

A chorus of cheerfully acquiescent voices answered, “No.” 

“ We have also invited Madame Corbie and the Archdeacon. It 
seems, for an expedition of the kind, one ought to have a real 
substantial chaperon or two. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Thorne, 
but ” 

Oh, don’t apologize,” cried Linda, with good humor, willing 
like most of her sex, to condone the accusation of over-youth. 

‘'And Madame Corbie accepts, conditionally. I have been 
paying my court to aged ladies half the morning ! So, uncondi- 
tionally, does Miss Tighe. As regards chaperonage, one may say 
really — really — ” hesitated Lord Rex, feeling, in his guilty soul, 
how red he grew, “ one may say, Mrs. Thorne, that in the matter 
of chaperons, there will be an embarrassment of riches.” 

“Especially as mamma never allows me to go anywhere with- 
out herself. Was it about the superabundance of chaperons that 
you knew we should attack you ? ” 

Rosie Yerschoyle asked the question in her gay, thin little 
voice, her unpremeditated manner, yet with a directness of aim 
that poor Lord Rex had not the cleverness to parry. 

“ Attack me ? Why that was only a foolish joke, don’t you 
know ! Yes, we — we have Mrs. Yerschoyle and the Archdeacon- 
ess as chaperons-in-chief. Only, poor Mrs. Yerschoyle, the mo- 
ment the Princess moves, will be in the cabin, and the Archdeacon- 
ess ” 

“ Try not to look so conscious. The Archdeaconess ? ” 

“ If the wind veers between this and Wednesday, will not start 
at all. And so, as we must have a married lady to do hostess for 
us, and as you, Mrs. Thorne, are also not a first-rate sailor, I have 
asked Mrs. Arbuthnot.” 

A heavy silence followed upon this announcement. Linda 
Thorne was the first to break it. 

“ And Mrs. Arbuthnot has accepted ? I need hardly ask the 
question.” 

“Yes,” returned Lord Rex, staunchly enough, “I am glad to 
say that Mrs. Arbuthnot has accepted.” 

Rosie Yerschoyle turned over and examined a band of silver on 
her round white wrist. 

“ Mrs. Arbuthnot ? Surely that is the same person we saw with 
Marjorie Bartrand at the rose-show ? How wonderfully hand- 


now DINAH SAID YES:* 


149 


some she is ! Mamma has talked of nothing else. One will be 
quite too glad to see her near. In these democratic days we must 
all bow unquestioningly before Beauty. The capital B renders it 
abstract.” 

Lord Kex felt the speech to be ungenerous. V ague questionings 
that he had once or twice held within himself, as to whether he 
might or might not be in danger of liking Miss Yerschoyle too 
well, received an impromptu solution at this moment. He was 
in no danger at all, held the local estimate of her good looks, 
even, to be over-strained. As she stood before him, in herfulness 
of youthful grace, the delicate profile held aloft, the little cruel 
sentences escaping, one by one, from her pouting red lips, Rosie’s 
prettiness seemed changed to Rex Basire as though the wand of 
some malignant fairy godmother had secretly touched her. 

“ My political opinions outstep democracy. Miss Yerschoyle. 
But if I were as starched a Tory as — as my own father, by Jove! 
I should think Mrs. Arbuthnot’s society an honor. I don’t 
understand that sort of thing, the tone people put on in speaking 
of a woman whose only crime is her beauty.” 

Mrs. Arbuthnot, if she needs a defender, is fortunate in pos- 
sessing so warm a one.” 

The remark was made by Rosie Yerschoyle, with unwise readi- 
ness. 

But one could never imagine her, poor dear, needing anything 
of the kind.” It was Linda Thorne who spoke. “ I have been 
introduced to Mrs. Arbuthnot by her husband. I have heard 
about her, also from him, and I am sure she is quite the most 
harmless of individuals. Not naturally bright! Like too many 
other gifted creatures, Mr. Arbuthnot may know the want of 
household sympathy ” 

“ Gets along capitally without it,” interrupted Lord Rex. 

Never saw any man better satisfied with himself and with his 
life than Arbuthnot.” 

“ Not naturally bright, and lacking the education which, in 
more fortunate people, serves as a varnish to poorness of ability. 
If they stay here long enough I shall persuade Mr. Arbuthnot, as 
a duty, to make his wife take lessons in music, riding, calisthenics, 
anything to beguile her from that patient, that perpetual cross- 
stitch.” 

Lord Rex gave a searching look at Linda Thorne’s face. His 
was no very high or luminous character, as will be seen in the 


150 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


after course of this history. Yet were his failings chiefly those 
of his age and circumstances. When he erred, it was without 
premeditation, walking along tracks trodden hard by others. 
His virtues were his own, and among these was the virtue of 
thorough straightforwardness. It trembled on Lord Rex’s tongue 
to ask Linda a crucial question relative to Gaston Arbuthnot’s 

duty,” when approaching footsteps made themselves heard along 
the gravel drive. There came a shrill shout of welcome in 
Rahnee’s voice, a torrent of pigeon English, presumably from 
the ayah, in which the words ‘‘Missy ’Butnot” might be dis- 
tinguished. Linda Thorne’s Indian-bleached cheeks assumed a 
just perceptible shade of red. 

“ Talk of angels,” she observed, raising her finger to her lips, 
“ and straightway Ave hear the flutter of their wings ! It Avould be 
wise to choose a rather less invidious theme than the demerits of 
cross-stitch.” 

And then, almost before she finished speaking, Gaston Ar- 
buthnot , with the quiet air of a man certain of the reception that 
awaits him, entered upon the scene. 

Next Wednesday’s yachting expedition continued to be the 
subject of talk among Linda’s visitors. But it was talk with a 
difference; the character of Ophelia cut, by desire, from the play. 
Hard to bewail the lot of gifted creatures, or discuss the necessity, 
in these democratic days, of bowing down to Beauty, with Dinah’s 
husband taking part in one’s conversation! When the party had 
dispersed, however, — Lord Rex, in spite of his disenchantment, 
escorting Rosie Yerschoyle home — Avhen Linda Thorne was left 
alone with Gaston Arbuthnot, she spoke her mind. 

And her tone was one which all her social knowledge, all her 
powers of self-command and self-effacement, failed to render 
sweet. 

Now it was a peculiarity belonging to Gaston Arbuthnot’s 
character, that he was apt to mystify every human creature, his 
cousin Geoffrey excepted, wdth whom his relations were near. 
The more intimate you became with this man, the less firm 
seemed the moral grip by which you held him. Dinah’s over- 
diffident heart perpetually doubted the stability of his love. She 
was unhappy Avith him, dreading lest, in her society, he were not 
enough amused. She was unhappy aAvay from him, dreading lest 
in her absence he were amused too well! Linda Thorne Avas 
equally at fault as to the texture of his friendship. Long years 


151 


HOW DINAH SAID “ YES,’^ 

ago, Gaston Arbuthnot’s boyish good looks — perhaps it must be 
owned, Gaston Arbuthnot’s devoted attentions — won all of tender 
sentiment that Linda, then a neglected, over-worked governess, 
had to give. She had been to India in the interval. She had 
learnt the market worth of sentiment. There was Dr Thorne . . . 
Kahnee 1 There were her duties, real and histrionic, to fill her 
life. And the days of her youth had reached the flickering hour 
before twilight. 

But Linda had not forgiven Gaston Arbuthnot. She had not 
forgotten how near she once came to loving him. And she was 
sorely, unreasonably wounded, through vanity rather than through 
feeling, by Dinah’s fresh and girlish charm. 

An anomalous position ; perhaps, a commoner one, than some 
young wives, morbidly sensitive as to alien influence over their 
husbands, may suspect. 

“So there has been a small imbroglio about Wednesday’s 
arrangements I I cannot tell you how glad I am to be relieved 
from a weight of sea-going responsibilty. Mrs. Arbuthnot, I am 
sure, will enact hostess for our young subalterns so much more 
gracefully than I could. She is a good sailor, doubtless ? ” 

Gaston had taken up a morsel of drawing paper, and some red 
chalk — every kind of artistic appliance had found its way, of late, 
into Mrs. Thorne’s drawing-room. Some ideal woman’s face with 
beauty, with anger on it, was growing into life under his hand. 
He finished, in a few delicate, subtle touches, the shadow be- 
tween a low Greek brow and eyelid ere he spoke. 

“Dinah is a famous sailor. We look back to a little Scottish 
yachting tour we made, soon after our marriage, as about the best 
time of our lives.” 

Linda Thorne, a fair decipherer of surface feeling in general, 
could gather absolutely nothing from Gaston’s level tone. He 
raised his eyes, during a steady second or two, from his paper ; 
he met her interrogative glance with one of strict neutrality. 

“I am relieved and at the name time stupidly inquisitive. 
Now, why, in the name of all things truthful, did you not men- 
tion that Mrs. Arbuthnot meant to go with us on Wednesday ? ” 

Gaston was silent, too absorbed perhaps in his creation, slight 
chalk sketch though it was, to give heed to matter so unimport- 
ant as this which Linda pressed upon him. 

“ Possibly you were not aware that Mrs. Arbuthnot loas going ? ” 


152 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


Linda Thorne hazarded the remark with a suspicion of itmoce!^\ 
malice. 

“That really is the truth.” Taking a folding-book from h'^ 
breast, Gaston stored away his sketch carefully between its leave ^ 
“You must excuse me, Mrs. Thorne. An idea struck me ju; - 
now, suggested by a look I surprised on the face of Miss YerschoyL \ 
and I hastened forthwith to make my memorandum. Dinah 1 ' 
enact hostess for the subalterns on Wednesday, do you say ^ 
Surely not. I could almost wish that it were to be so. But m - 
wife, as you know, keeps to her own quiet way of life.” 

“ We have Lord Bex Basire’s word for it. According to Lord 
Rex, Mrs. Arbuthnot has most decidedly accepted their invita- 
tion.” 

“ Dinah does not mean to go. Lord Rex deceives himself.” 

Gaston Arbuthnot spoke with sincerity. He had told Geoifrey, 
as a jest, that Dinah was turning over a new leaf, beginning to 
discover, poor girl, that there might be other music in the spheres 
besides that of the eternal domes1;ic duo without accompaniment. 
Of Dinah’s profoundly changed mood, her resolve of gaining wider 
views by frequenting a world W'hich as yet she knew not, he was 
ignorant. 

Linda Thorne watched him sceptically. 

“ Pray do not dash my hopes. I trust and I believe that Mrs. 
Arbuthnot will play hostess to us all next Wednesday. Come !” 
she added, with rather forced playfulness. “ AVill you make me 
a bet about it ? I will give you any amount of odds you like, in 
Jouvin’s best.” 

“ It is against my principles to bet on a certainty, Mrs. Thorne. 

I am as certain that Dinah has not pledged herself for Wednes- 
day’s picnic as that I have pledged myself to dine with Doctor and 
Mrs. Thorne this evening.” 

But, in spite of his assured voice, a shade of restlessness was 
to be traced in Gaston Arbuthiiot’s manner. He w^ould not 
remain, as it had become his habit to do, at The Bungalow, sing- 
ing, or drawing, or chatting away the two hours between after- 
noon tea and dinner, in Linda’s society. Even Rahnees (to Gas- 
ton’s mind the first attraction in the house) must forego her usual 
game of hide-and-seek with “ Missy ’Butnot.” Even Rahnee 
threw her thin, bangled arms round her playmate’s neck in vain. 
Erankly, so, at last, he was brought to make confession, he had 
forgotten to tell Dinah of his engagement, must hurry back, 
forthwith, to Miller’s Hotel to set Dinah’s heart at rest. Un- 
necessary ? “ Ah, Mrs. Thorne,” and as he spoke, Gaston’s eyes 

looked straight into the lady’s soul, “that question of necessity 
just depends upon the state of one’s domestic legislation. Regard- 
ing these small matters, my wife and I, fortunately for ourselves, 
are in our honeymoon stage still.” 

This was ahvays Gaston’s tone in speaking of Dinah at The 
Bungalow. He painted truth in truth’s brightest colors wiien- 
ever he afforded Linda Thorne a glimpse of his own household 
happiness. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


GASTON ARBUTHNOT’S PHILOSOPHY. 

The first dressing-bell was ringing by the time he reached the 
hotel. Dinah’s parlor was empty; her embroidery frame, silver 
paper shrouding its impossible forget-me-nots and auriculas from 
the light of heaven, stood on her work-table. Passing into the 
adjoining room without knocking, Mr. Arbuthnot beheld a sight 
not jjbnew to him, save as regarded the hour of the day — Dinah on 
her knees beside her bed, her head bowed, her face hidden between 
her hands. 

She rose up hurriedly at the sound of her husband’s entrance. 
She brushed away some tell-tale tears, not, however, before 
Gaston’s quick glance had had opportunity to detect them. 

All men dislike the sight of a wife in tears. A small minority 
may dislike the sight of a wife on her knees. Gaston Arbuthnot 
shared both prejudices. He concealed his irritation under a kiss 
— cold, mechanical, the recipient felt those kisses to be — bestowed 
on each of Dinah’s flushing cheeks. 

“I beg a thousand pardons for disturbing you at your prayers, 
my dear, but ” 

“ I was not praying. I wish Iliad been,” interrupted Dinah, 
promptly. “ To pray, one’s heart must be at rest.” 

Now Gaston Arbuthnot looked upon all strong and unpleasant 
emotion with a feeling bordering on actual repugnance. And 
Dinah’s voice had that in it which threatened storm. His irrita- 
tion grew. 

“ I beg your pardon for interrupting a mood not calm enough 
for prayer (although it required a prayerful attitude), yet sad enough 
for tears. That terrible habit of weeping will wear away even 
your good looks in time, Dinah.” 

A time far distant, surely ! Never had she been fairer in Gaston’s 
sight than at this moment, in her fresh cambric dinner dress, with 
her hair like a nimbus of gold around her forehead, with a color 


154 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


vermeil as any Italian dawn on the . cheeks his lips had newly 
touched. 

‘‘ I should like to keep my good looks till I am fifty years old, if 
good looks were only faithful servants, if they brought one only a 
taste of real happiness ! As it is ” 

“My dear girl, although you chance to be a little out of temper 
with life, don’t forget you have a husband. I am a vain man — so 
you and Geff tell me — and the chief of all my vanities is, that I 
am blest with a handsome wife.” 

“ Out of temper with life ? I think not, Gaston. Life has been 
sent me, the rugged with the smooth, and I must learn to fit my- 
self to both. If I had been clever, I should have learnt my lesson 
long ago. I must shape myself to things as they are, not want to 
shape them according to my poor village notions. I was trying to 
reason about it all just now ’^ 

“In an attitude that I misunderstood,” observed Gaston Arbuth- 
not. 

“ I go on my knees when I need to think, clearly and humbly. 
I would not dare to say at such times that I pray.” 

Talk like this was beneath, or above, Gaston Arbuthnot’s level. 
He told her so plainly. 

“ My afternoon has been passed in a thoroughly mundane and 
grovelling manner, Dinah. I left this house at about three, just 
w'hen you were giving Lord Lex Basire a lesson in cross-stitch ! 
Since then, I have been spending my time, not in solemn thoughts 
that required genuflexion, but in listening to the last little version 
of the last little bit of island gossip. It seems you mean at last 
to go into the world where, as I have of ten told you, so many more 
sink than swim. You have accepted Bex Basire’s invitation for 
the picnic next Wednesday ? ” 

The accusation, if it were one, came with a sharpness of ring 
foreign to Gaston Arbuthnot’s modulated voice. Dinah’s color 
deepened. 

“ I have accepted Lord Rex Basire’s invitation for Wednesday — 
yes.” 

. “ You cannot, I think, mean to go. The picnic will be a helter- 

skelter kind of affair. It was got up by these young men in the 
first instance, more as a frolic than anything else, and ” 

‘ ‘ You are going, yourself, are you not, Gaston ? ” 

“ That is uncertain. I believe I did give a conditional consent 


GASTON ARBUTNOT^S PHILOSOPHY. 155 

over the dinner-table, before it was at all sure the thing would 
come off/" 

And Mrs. Thorne is going ? ” 

Oh, Linda goes everywhere. There is a legend that she and 
the Doctor dined one night at mess.” 

‘‘ And Madame Corbie ? Don’t you think a party that is staid 
enough for an Archdeacon’s wife must be safe for me ? ” 

It was Dinah who spoke; yet the tone, the words, were curiously 
unlike Dinah’s. Some other woman, surely, stood in the place of 
her, who during four years had been as wax to every careless 
turn of Gaston Arbuthnot’s will ! 

I can see that you have made up your mind — confess, Dinah, 
you have run already to Madame Voisin’s and ordered your dress 
for Wednesday ? ” 

She turned away, impatiently, at the question. 

“ Well, I will not be unwise enough to argue. At least persuade 
Geoffrey to go too, get Geoffrey to take care of you. Had I been 
consulted,” remarked Gaston dryly, I should have advised you to 
‘ come out ’ anywhere rather than on a yacht hired, in this kind 
of way, by Lord Kex Basire, and his brother subs.” 

‘^Gaston!” 

Oh, not because of the right or wrong of the thing. I don’t,” 
said Gaston, ‘‘go in for transcendental attitudes, morally or physi- 
cally. My advice would have been simply offered on a matter of 
taste. You, my love, are doubtless the best judge. What time is 
it — seven ? Then I have scarcely half-an-hour left to dress.” 

“ To dress! ” faltered Dinah. “ And my briar roses, our walk 
to Roscoff Common ? I have been looking forward to it for days. 
Did you not promise to draw me some real briar roses for the 
finish of my border ? ’’ 

“ Of course, I promised, and of course I shall fulfil, my dear 
child. The Roscoff roses will keep.” 

“ And you are going out to dinner again, Gaston ? ” 

“ Only to The Bungalow.” Mr. Arbuthnot made a move towards 
the door of his dressing-room. “ Mrs. Thorne is amiable enough 
generally to condone a morning-coat. To-night, I believe, there 
will be more of a party than usual.” 

Dinah rested her hand upon her husband’s shoulder, but not 
with the clinging, imploring touch to which Gaston Arbuthnot 
was accustomed. 

“ If I could have an answer to one question I should be con- 


156 


A GIBTON GIEL. 


tent,” she exclaimed, almost with passion. It is an answer you 
can give. What are Mrs. Thorne’s gifts ? What is the cleverness 
which draws a man as difficult to please as you, five days a week 
to her house ? ” 

The situation had become critical. A feverish color burned on 
Dinah’s face, her question was trenchant and desperately to the 
point. But it was just the hardest thing imaginable to get Gaston 
Arbuthnot into a tiptoe posture. The drama of his life, so he him- 
self avowed, consisted, a good nine-tenths of it, of carpenters’ 
scenes. If he were forced to declaim some passage of high and 
tragic blank-verse it would inevitably sound like a bit of genteel 
comedy from his lips ! 

A husband of warmer temper, it would be unjust to say, of 
warmer heart, must have kindled at the daring of Dinah’s words, 
the ardent eagerness of her face. 

Gaston Arbuthnot was interested rather than moved. He 
answered with the chill candor of an impartial judge: 

‘‘ Linda’s gifts ? First on the list we must place the cardinal 
one of vocal silence. Mrs. Thorne does not sing.” 

“ She can accompany other people who do,” said Dinah, with 
imprudent significance. 

And can accompany them well. Have I ever told you, Dinah, 
how and where I first saw the lady who is now Doctor Thorne’s 
wife?” 

“You have not. You have never spoken to me about Mrs. 
Thorne’s life, past or present.” 

Dinah’s tone w^as as nearly acrid as her full and rounded 
quality of voice permitted. She felt intuitively that Gaston would 
parry her question, as he had so often done before, by apposite 
narrative which yet led no whither; felt that though every word 
he spoke might be true to the letter, the one truth of vital moment 
to herself would be in the words left unspoken. 

“ It was in Paris, my love, in long past days before I went to 
Cambridge, and when I was much less of an Englishman that I 
am now. My mother, with a wholesome dread of my artist friends 
and of the Quartier Latin, cultivated what she called occasions of 
family life for m^. One such occasion came to her hand. Under 
the same roof with us, but on a lower floor, as befitted their purse, 
lived a rich Jew family, with a bevy of young daughters and an 
English governess ” 

“ Linda Thorne ?” 


GASTON ABBUTHNOTS PHILOSOPHY, 157 


“At that time Linda Smythe. Yes, Linda Constantia was 
seated at a piano the first evening my mother forced me down to 
Madame Benjamin’s salon. I think I see her now, poor soul, 
playing accompaniments to the singing — the terrible operatic sing- 
ing of Papa Benjamin ! By-and-by we danced in a round, ‘ Have 
you seen the baker’s girl ? ’ ‘ Mary, soak thy bread in wine,’ and 

and other mild dances of the unmarried French mees. The gov- 
erness remained at the piano still. ‘Our good Smeet! she knows 
so well to efface herself, said Madame Benjamin, giving me a 
tumbler of sugar-water to present to my countrywoman. I might 
almost answer your question, Dinah, in Madame Benjamin’s 
words — Linda Thorne understands perfectly the difficult social art 
of effacing oneself.” 

“Was she effaced at Saturday’s rose-show?” 

“ She was a locum teneiis, good-naturedly presiding over the 
refreshment stall for some friend with a sprained ankle.” 

“ With an affection of the throat, Gaston. So the story ran, 
when you first told it me.” 

“ You are severe, Dinah. If a pretty woman could possibly be 
tempted into feeling bitterly towards a plain one, I should say that 
you were bitter towards Linda Thorne.” 

Dinah was unsoftened by the compliment. 

“ ‘ To efface oneself,’ ” she repeated. “ That means — in homely, 
plain English, such as I talk and understand? ” 

“To keep gracefully in the background while others fill the 
prominent parts,” said Gaston with a laugh. “ If you knew 
Linda Thorne better, if you could see her at one of her own 
charming little parties, you would appreciate the knack she has 
of not shining. She is quite the least selfish, least self-absorbed 
creature in the world.” 

Straight, warm, living, flew a denial from Dinah’s lips. 

“Mrs. Thorne is wrapt in selfishness ! If she was a good, true 
woman, she must guess how the hearts of other women, other 
wives, bleed, only at a thought of neglect ! I can’t cope with 
her, Gaston, for conversation. She was born and educated a lady, 
and I belong to the working people, less taught when I was a 
child than they are now. But that should make her generous. 
She is rich in good things — has she not got little Eahnee ? And 
I have but the hope, weak that hope grows at times, of keeping 
your love.” 


158 


A Gin TON GinL. 


A flush of annoyance overspread Gaston Arbuthnot's handsome 
face. 

‘^If you would only take life in a quieter spirit, Dinah, content 
yourself with the moment’s common happiness, like the rest of 
us ! I speak in kindness, my dear girl.” Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot 
here fell to examining his signet-ring closely, perhaps because he 
did not wish to meet his wife’s eyes. “ If you would care for any 
mortal thing, in addition to that somewhat unworthy person, 
Gaston Arbuthnot, it would be better for us both.” 

Dinah turned deadly white. 

“ If the child had lived ! ” she muttered. If we had her now, 
the age of little Rahnee, my heart would not be so athirst for 
love. It would come to me naturally. Just as I am, no cleverer, 
or brighter, or more original, you might find my company sufficient, 
if we had the child.” 

We cannot cut out our lives by our own pattern,” said Gaston, 
with irrefragable philosophy. “ The disappointment, God knows, 
was bitterly keen to both of us, at the time. Looking round the 
world, now, I am disposed to wonder sometimes, if the possession 
of a child be an unmixed blessing.” 

‘‘It would have been so to me.” The wound had never so 
thoroughly healed that Dinah could bear a careless touch on the 
cicatrice. “But I have no right to complain” — she said this 
through her tears — “God gave, and took away. Who ami to 
question His wisdom ? ” 

During several seconds Mr. Arbuthnot seemed to grow more 
and more absorbed in the contemplation of his ring; then, by an 
alert side movement, he. contrived to reach the door of his dress- 
ing-room. 

“You are going ? You intend really to dine with the Thornes 
this evening ? ” 

Dinah brushed her hand hastily across her eyes. 

“ Certainly, I intend to keep my engagement,” answered Gaston 
Arbuthnot. 

“You would not break it, if I asked you ? ” 

“ I would do any conceivable thing you asked me — with suffi- 
cient cause. I have too much opinion of your good taste to dread 
your ever placing yourself, or me, in a ridiculous position.” 

“ If you would I should give up all this plan for Wednesday. 
We would go back ” — a soft far-off look stole over Dinah’s face 
as though for a moment she indulged in the retrospect of some 


GASTON ABBUTUNOT^S PHILOSOPHY, 159 


too-dear dream — go back — all! fool that I am — to the early days, 
days when you said the best dinner-party in London could not 
tempt you to leave me for an evening.” 

While she was speaking, she had followed him. Her hand 
rested on his sleeve. Her eyes with piteous, imploring earnest- 
ness, sought to read his face. 

“ There is no returning to old days,” said Gaston Arbuthnot. 
‘‘ People of our age should have sense enough to realize this. 
The exclusive boy-and-girl idolatry of one year of life would be 
rank absurdity in a dignified Darby and Joan of our standing.” 

Dinah shrank away from him. Perhaps it occurred to her that 
exclusive idolatry had never existed at all on Gaston’s side. How 
long, in truth, did he keep to the declaration, made in his honey- 
moon, of preferring quiet evenings with her to the best dinner- 
parties in London ? 

“ When I came in just now, Dinah, I interrupted you at some 
spiritual exercise, not high enough to be called prayer, yet that 
required a kneeling attitude. It is a pity,” said Mr. Arbuthnot, 
looking disagreeable, that the self- communings of good people 
so seldom lead them to charity — I don’t mean almsgiving — I 
mean a broader, more charitable frame of mind. If you could 
only recognize one fact, that there is a great variety of human 
nature about you in the world, it would be something gained.” 

‘‘ I know it, Gaston. What I want is to be lifted out of my 
own narrow ignorance.” 

‘‘ Take Geoffrey, for instance. In Geoffrey we have a man sound 
to the (!ore. No caprice, no vanity, in our cousin, none of the 
discontent and levity, and thirst for amusement which disfigure 
some characters that might be named. For contrast,” Gaston 
Arbuthnot’ s eyes rested discerningly on his wife, “ look at Eex 
Basire — an empty-skulled little tailor’s block doubtless, yet with 
a brave soldier’s heart in him all the same ! By-the-by, my dear, 
I need not exhort you,” he added, lightly, to be charitable to 
Lord Eex. If women would only be as fair towards each other as 
they are towards us ! I really admire the philosophy with which 
you gave that young gentleman his lesson in cross-stitch to-day.” 

The careless tone of the banter brought back Dinah’s accustomed 
self-control. Nothing so effectually checks emotion as the absence 
of emotion in our fellow-actors. 

‘ ‘ Lord Eex was bent upon working three or four stitches in my 
ottoman. It cost me the trouble only of unpicking them, and 


160 


A GIB TON GIBL. 


when he asked my leave, I was ignorant, I always am ignorant 
about the politeness of saying ‘ no.’ That is what I must learn.” 

“The art of saying ^no,’” observed Mr. Arbuthnot, not in a 
very hearty voice. 

“The art of speaking and acting — well, as Mrs. Thorne, as 
every woman of your world, would do! There’s no going back to 
old days, Gaston. You are right there. I must shape myself to 
things as they are, not try to shape them to my needs. That is 
chiefly why I accepted the invitation for Wednesday. I mean to 
learn from the example of others. I mean to turn over a new leaf 
from to-day. 

“ Keep true to -your own transparent self, child. Be what you 
have been always, and I, for one, shall be contented!” 


CHAPTER XX. 


JAMES lee’s wife.’’ 

The speech was really the best chosen, prettiest thing that a 
somewhat errant husband could have found to say. In every 
moral encounter that befel Gaston Arbuthnot, and whether his 
antagonist floundered in the mud or no, Gaston seemed invariably 
to find himself at the last in a graceful attitude. But Dinah’s 
heart was no more warmed by honied little phrases than by the 
reconciliatory kiss her husband bestowed on her, ere he started to 
his dinner-party. She was reaching — nay, had reached — the miser- 
able stage when honied phrases and reconciliatory kisses are in 
themselves matters of distrust ! How, her lonely dinner over, 
would she get through the evening hours — long counted-on hours 
— when she was to have walked, her hand within Gaston’s arm, 
to distant Roscoff Common for her briar roses ! 

For a space Dinah looked listlessly forth at the garden. It was 
full of people who knew each other, who talked together in 
friendly voices — the boarders of the hotel, with whom Gaston 
mixed, with whom Gaston was popular. Then she seated herself 
before her embroidery frame. But recollections of I.ord Rex 
Basire, of the effaced stitches, of Gaston’s commentaries on her 

patience,” made the thought of work repugnant to her. If she 
could only read, she thought! Xot after her dull, country pattern, 
repeating each word to herself as a child cons his task, ere he can 
take in its meaning. If she could read for pleasure, as she had 
watched Geoffrey read — quickly, easily, with hearty human in- 
terest, like one bent on receiving counsel from some well-beloved 
friend! 

A book of Geff’s lay on the mantelshelf. Dinah rose, crossed 
the room with languid steps, and took it in her hand. Then as 
readers invariably do, to whom the shell of a book matters more 
than the kernel, she fell to a careful examination of the text, bind- 
ing, title-page. 


162 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


The Poetical Works of Kobert Browning. Yol. YI. Dramatis 
PersoncB. 

Well, four years ago, during the brief fortnight of Geoffrey’s 
madness, it chanced one evening that he walked out to Lesser 
Cheriton with this very book in his pocket. (Did some inefface- 
able rose-odor of that dead June cling to the pages still, render- 
ing Yol. YI. dearer in Geff’s imagination than its fellows ?) He 
read James Lee’s Wife ” aloud to Dinah Thurston — a poem 
totally outside the girl’s comprehension — and during the recital of 
which her decently suppressed yawns must have rebuffed any man 
less blindly in love than was Geoffrey Arbuthnot. 

At “ James Lee’s Wife ’’ the book opened now. 

“ Ah, Love, but a day, 

And the world has changed 1^^ 

Binah read through the first stanzas untouched. Pretty love- 
warblings, the cry of a happy woman’s heart, — what had they to 
say to her, Dinah Arbuthnot ? In the last stanza of “By the 
Fireside ” her pulse gave a leap. 

“ Did a woman ever — would I knew 1 — 

Watch the man ” 

Dinah went back to the window, the volume in her hand. She 
returned to the beginning of the poem, pored over it, line by line, 
stanza by stanza, in the fading light. 

“ Yet this turns now to a fault — there ! there ! 

That I do love, watch too long. 

And wait too well, and weary and wear; 

And His all an old story, and my despair 
Fit subject for some new songj^ 

And when she had got thus far, the clouds of her ignorance 
lightened. She began to understand . 

Shortly before ten o’clock entered Geoffrey. The parlor lamps 
were not lit. Dinah’s figure was in dense shadow as she leaned, 
absorbed in her own thoughts, beside the open window. Geoffrey 
believing the room empty, sang under his breath, as he groped 
his way across to the mantleshelf : no very distinguishable tune — 
an car for music was not among Geff’s gifts — but with sufficient 


“ JAMES LEE *S WIFE.^^ 163 

of a quick, triplet measure in it to recall a Spanish Barcadero that 
Marjorie Bartrand was fond of singing to herself. 

To Dinah’s sick heart the song was consciously wounding. 

She had been so long used to Geif’s undivided homage, that 
sense of power, had, little by little, grown into tyranny, gentle 
rose-leaf tyranny, whose weight Geoffrey’s broad shoulders bore 
without effort, and yet having in its nature one of tyranny’s in- 
alienable qualities, lack of justice. 

‘‘Always inspirits, Geoffrey!” The reproach came to him 
through the gloom. “ It is good to think, whether the day is dark 
or shining, our cousin Geoffrey can always sing.” 

Geoffrey was at her side in a moment. 

“ It is cruel to speak of my horrible groanings as singing, Mrs. 
Arbuthnot, crueller still to hint of them as betokening good 
spirits. Where is Gaston ? You are back earlier than I expected 
from your walk to Roscoffe.” 

“ The walk fell through. I shall have to border my work with 
a rose pattern bought in the shops. Gaston was obliged to dine 
at Doctor Thorne’s. He made the engagement, of course, with- 
out thinking of our walk. I ought never to have counted on those 
Roscoff wild roses. I ” 

Dinah’s voice lapsed, brokenly, into silence. 

“ If you would like the roses, you can have them by breakfast 
to-morrow,” said Geoffrey. “ Few things I should enjoy better 
than a six-mile trudge in the early morning.” 

“ No, Geoffrey, no. Gaston always tells me that my bought 
patterns are atrocious, and the walk was planned by him, and he 
was to have sketched from the fresh briars by lamplight. My 
heart in it all is over. The Roscoff roses may go !” 

As so much of weightier delight had been allowed to go, 
negligently, irrevocably, out of Dinah Arbuthnot’s life. Dinah, 
herself, might not suggest the thought, but to Geoffrey’s mind, it 
was a vivid, a pathetic one. 

“ And why should you not take my escort ? You know I am 
never burthened with engagements. Let us go to Roscoff to- 
morrow. You owe Miss Bartrand a visit. Well, we will take 
Tintajeux on our road, and make Marjorie show us the way to 
Roscoff Common.” 

“Miss Bartrand will not expect me to return her visit. She 
came here because — because you, dear Geff, with or without 
words, bade her come ! I should never have courage to face the 


164 


A GIBTON GIRL, 


grandfather. Gaston would be the right person to call on the 
Seigneur of Tintajeux.’’ 

“The Seigneur of Tintajeux might think otherwise,” Geoffrey 
laughed. “Old Andros Bartrand made minute inquiries about 
Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot, the last time I saw him.” 

“About me — always the same story!” cried Dinah, uneasily. 
“ Why should people talk of us ? What is there in my life, or in 
Gaston’s, that need arouse so much curiosity 

“ Shall I answer as your friend. Lord Rex, would do ? ” 
Answer truly, Geff, not like Lord Rex Basire, but like your- 
self.^’ 

“ Why should the good people of Guernsey talk about you, do 
you ask ? Because, Mrs. Arbuthnot, even in this country of fair 
faces, yours may have gained the reputation of being the fairest.” 

The speech would have fitted Lord Rex better. Geff was sensi- 
ble in the darkness that his cheek reddened, 

“ The fairest 1 ” echoed poor Dinah, petulantly. “ Oh, I sicken 
of the very word ‘ fair.’ Shades of hair or of eyes, a white skin, a 
straight profile, how can people think twice of these trivial 
things ? The woman best worth speaking about in Guernsey or 
elsewhere should be she, not with the fairest, but the happiest 
face.” 

Her own, certainly, was not happy to-night. Growing ac- 
customed to the parlor’s darkness, fitfully broken by a reflected 
light from one of the garden lamps outside, Geff could note her 
exceeding pallor. He could note, also, that Dinah Arbuthnot’s 
eyes revealed no trace of tear-shedding, that a look, rather, of 
newly-stirred interest, of awakening excitement, was in their 
depths. 

“ And you have spent your evening, not only without Gaston, 
but without cross-stitch ? It is a fresh experience,” he told her 
gravely, “ for you to be idle.” 

“ I read until the light went. Don’t you see — I have got hold 
of a book of yours ? A book of verses that I did not understand 
when you tried to read it aloud to me at Lesser Cheriton.” 

Ah, how the old name, spoken by her tongue, stabbed him 
always I Geoffrey Arbuthnot bent his face above the volume in 
Dinah’s hand. 

“‘Robert Browning.’ But for my bad reading, you ought to 
have liked these poems four years ago.” 

“ I think not, Geff. Uneducated people can like only where 


JAMES LEE'S WIFE:* 


166 


they feel. And in those young days,’’ — oh, unconsciously cruel 
Dinah! — I felt so little. But I have an object, now, in learning. 
I want to learn on all subjects, out of books as well as from life. 
That reminds me of something I had to say to you, Geff. Lord 
Rex Basire was calling on me this afternoon.” 

‘‘ Lord Rex Basire was calling on you the greater part of yester- 
terday. 

“ And I took upon myself to accept an invitation for you. There 
will be a picnic party on Wednesday. It is some yachting expedi- 
tion to the French coast, got up by the officers of the Regiment, 
to which you will be asked 

“ But to which I shall certainly not go. I can get as far out to 
sea as I like with the fisher people. Wednesday is one of my 
busiest days. 

“Miss Bartrand will be invited, too, if you are thinking of her,” 

“ Miss Bartrand can do as she chooses. I have more important 
work than my two hours’ reading at Tintajeux.” 

“ If I ask you, Geff, will you refuse ? ” 

“ I refuse, unconditionally. I hate gay parties. What mortal 
interest could I have in the society of men like Lord Rex Basire 
and his brother officers ? ” 

“Only that I am going, that Gaston ... I mean, I looked upon 
it as a matter of course you would accept, and ” 

The words died on Dinah’s lips. She had an unreasoning 
sensation that her firmest safety ground was at this moment cut 
abruptly from her feet. 

As she stood, faltering, uncertain, Geoffrey took the volume of 
Browning from her. It opened at page 58. 

“ Little girl with the 'poor coarse hand:* 

There was just sufficient light for him to make out the letters of 
the first line. 

“ Is this the poem you have been reading, Mrs. Arbuthnot ? 
Why, I distinctly remember your pronouncing ‘ James Lee’s Wife’ 
to be meaningless.” 

“ I have my lesson — shall understand,” said Dinah. ‘‘ ‘ James 
Lee’s Wife ’ is the story of a woman whose heart is broken.” 

And she turned from him. Geoffrey could only see her face in 
extreme profile. The cheek with its drawn oval, the exquisite, 
sad lips, showed in strong relief, like a cheek, like lips of marble 
against the night sky. 


166 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


He first broke silence. 

“Do you care, seriously — do you care a fraction, one way or the 
other — about my accepting this invitation of Basire’s for Wednes- 
day ?’’ he asked her. “ Is it possible my going could be of help 
to you ? ’’ 

A big lump in poor Dinah’s throat kept her, during some mo- 
ments, from speaking. Then with trembling eagerness her an- 
swer broke forth. She cared more seriously than she could say 
“ about Geoffrey’s not forsaking her.” Gaston, of course, would 
be of the party, but then Gaston was so popular , so sure to be 
unapproachable! She would never, never want Geoffrey to 
martyrize himself again. It was the first great favor she had asked 
him. When she was once launched in the world, said Dinah, 
rallying with effort, she would know what to say and do and look, 
unhelped by a prompter. 

All Geff’s hatred for gay parties, and for men like Lord 
Bex Basire and his brother officers, went to the winds. That 
Dinah was beginning to anatomize her pain unhelped by sugges- 
tion from without, that Dinah had grasped the subtle meaning 
of “ James Lee’s Wife,” were facts that could not be lightly put 
aside. Her cry to himself, Geoffrey thought, was that of a child 
who seeks succor, from instinct, rather than from knowledge of 
his danger. 

“ The martyrdom would not last long,” urged Dinah, misjudging 
his intention. “ To any one so fond of the sea as you, Geff, twelve 
or fifteen hours on board a steamer are not much. We are to 
leave early in the morning and be back in Guernsey the following 
night. If you know what a kindness you would be doing me ! ” 

“ I mean to go,” said Geff Arbuthnot, shortly. 

Twelve hours ! He felt, just then, that he would pass twelve 
weeks, or months, on a steamer, if by so doing he could lighten 
one ounce of Dinah’s burthens to her ! 

“And Gaston’s conscience will be at rest,” she exclaimed. 
“ The truth is, you see, Gaston was not well pleased at my 
accepting at all. He bade me ask you, Geoffrey, to look after me.” 

To a more sophisticated mind than Geff’s it might have occurred 
that the most fitting man to look after Gaston Arbuthnot’ s wife 
would be — Gaston Arbuthnot himself. 


CHAPTER XXL 


** IS MY VIRGIL PASSABLE ? ** 

I HAVE written that, in a softened and remorseful moment Mar- 
jorie Bartrand’s heart owned Geoffrey for its master. 

In a character like Marjorie’s, softened and remorseful moods 
are apt, however to be intermittent. On the evening of Saturday 
her pride had melted, ay, to such a point that, holding her tutor’s 

love-letter ” between her hands, she went into a storm of peni- 
tent tears — she, Marjorie Bartrand, whose boast had been that 
there was one woman in Her British Majesty’s domain who would 
shed tears for no man while she lived ! 

Looking back upon these things from the cool and bracing 
heights of a Tintajenx Sunday, the girl’s stout spirit recoiled with 
derision from the image of her own weakness. The Seigneur’s 
after-dinner sarcasm, she felt, with tingling cheek, was true of 
aim. She had played a part, unknowingly, in the Arbuthnot 
drama; thanks to Cassandra Tighe, had no doubt treated Geof- 
frey with kindness not his due for the imaginary wife’s sake! 
Now would eveiy thing be on a frigidly proper footing. Her 
tutor had shown very good sense in returning property that had 
wrongly fallen into his keeping. Whatever small halo of romance 
hung around his life was dispelled. The construction of Latin 
prose, the working out of mathematical problems, would hence- 
forth go on with dignified and scholarlike serenity. 

But, as a first step, Geoffrey Arbuthnot should hear the truth ! 

Old Andros happened to give a longer sermon than usual on 
this Sunday morning of June 26 — a sermon wearing a French 
garb now, but which was first preached fifty years ago before the 
University of Oxford, and whose polished sentences breathed the 
safe and sleepy theology of its day. The whole of the congrega- 
tion slept, save one ; the gentlemanly optimism of eighteen hun- 
dred and thirty appealing moderately to hearers who in the evening 
would revive beneath the burning eloquence of some neighboring 


168 


A GinrON GlItL. 


Bethesda or Zion. Marjorie, only, was awake: keen, restless, 
preternaturally stirred to mundane thoughts and desires as she 
had ever found herself, from her rebellious babyhood upward, 
under the inspiration of a high oak pew and monumental slabs. 
She thought over all her hours with Geoffrey from the first even- 
ing when she saw him in the Tintajeux drawing-room until their 
half quarrel on Saturday. She thought of her visit to Dinah, of 
the disillusionment wrought in her by the vision of French song- 
books and yellow-backed novels. She thought of the moment 
when she rescued her letter from the Seigneur’s hands ! Happily, 
the comedy of errors approached its finish! Geoffrey Arbuthnot 
should hear the truth, should have his masculine vanity soothed 
by no further misinterpretation of her conduct. Into a debateable 
land wliere a mature woman, her heart already touched, had 
shrunk from venturing, Marjorie, with the madcap courage of 
seventeen, resolved to rush. 

As a first step, Geoffrey Arbuthnot should hear the truth ! 

And this resolution, formed in the dim religious light of the 
Tintajeux family pew, did not melt away, like too many excellent 
Sunday purposes, under the secular warmth of work-a-day open 
air. When Geoffrey walked into Marjorie’s schoolroom on Tues- 
day morning he found Grim Fate, in a print chintz frock, with 
blossoming maidenly face, ready to place him in the outer cold 
forever. 

Good-day to you, Mr. Arbuthnot.” The girl held herself 
stiffly upright, with smileless lips, with hands safely embedded in 
the pockets of her pinafore. I was much obliged to you for re- 
turning my ribbon on Saturday, but I need not have put you to 
the trouble, to the expense of postage ! I could have waited until 
to-day.” 

Geoffrey, a backward interpreter always of feminine pet- 
ulancy, sought for no latent meaning in her words. Marjorie 
Bartrand had never looked sweeter to him than now, in her fresh 
summer frock, with a livelier damask than usual on her cheeks, 
and with her hands cruelly holding back from their wonted 
friendly greeting. He had it not in his heart, on this June 
morning, to find a fault in her, inheritress of all the sins of all the 
Bartrand s though she might be. 

My poverty is heinous, Miss Bartrand, but I could just afford 
the penny stamp required for the postage of your waist belt. 
After the lecture you read me on Saturday morning,” went ou 


MY VIRGIL PASSABLE?** 1G9 

Geff, good humoredly, ‘‘ I really dared not face you with that 
morsel of ribbon still in my possession.” 

Marjorie’s lips lost their firmness. Taking her place at the 
schoolroom table, she cleared her throat twice. Then she pushed 
across a pile of copy books in Geoffrey’s direction. She signed to 
him to be seated, pi esented him with a bundle of pens, drew for- 
ward the inkstand. Finally, entrenched, as it were, behind the 
implements which defined their social relationship, she delivered 
herself of the. following singular confession : 

When my lecture, as you please to call it, was given I did not 
know that you existed, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.” 

‘‘ Miss Bartrand I ” 

‘‘ The lecture was meant, in good faith, for another person. If 
an apology is needed — there, you have it I I — I had listened to 
idle gossip,” said Marjorie, taking desperate courage at the sound 
of her own voice, “ and so I must say it out, little though I like 
such subjects — and I thought you were a married man, sir. I 
thought so from thefirst evening you came here. I thought so un- 
til the hour when I saw Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot at the rose-show.’^ 
And your motives — when you called on Dinah ? ” exclaimed 
Geoffrey, thrown abruptly off his guard. 

‘‘When I called on Mrs. Arbuthnot I believed her to be my 
tutor’s wife. I had heard a great deal about her goodness and her 
beauty. And I had almost grown to hate you,” added Marjorie, 
with one of her terrible bursts of outspokenness, “ for leaving 
such a woman as Dinah at home, neglected, while you, amused 
yourself.” 

Then she lifted her eyes. She was startled to see how Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot’s face had paled: under the incivility, so Marjorie 
supposed, of her speech. 

“As a fact of course I never hated you at all.” Her voice 
shook a little. “ That gentle, beautiful Mrs. Arbuthnot is not 
your wife.” 

“ Kot my wife,” echoed poor Geoffrey absently. 

His tone was chill. Dipping a pen in the Ink, he began to trace 
meaningless curves and lines on the cover of the exercise-book 
nearest his hand. During a few seconds he was obviously un- 
mindful of his pupil’s presence. 

“ Her lips, with their sad expression, haunt me,” remarked 
Marjorie presently. “ Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot, I should thinky 
must be the most beautiful woman in the world.” 


170 


A GIETON GIEL, 


‘‘ As she is certainly the truest and best.’’ Geff had got back 
his self-possession. He spoke his credo as valiantly as though 
Marjorie Bartrand’s eyes were not fixed upon him. ‘‘ And so,” 
he found voice to say, “ you would actually believe, on hearsay 
evidence, that a girl like Dinah would have chosen me for her 
husband, and I— have neglected her ? ” 

Geoffrey laughed, not very joyously, then taking up another 
copy-book he glanced with mechanical show of attention over a 
sentence or two of Marjorie’s Latin translation. He held the 
page upside down,— a fact which her memory, in after-times, 
might recall as significant. 

“ I honestly believed you to be married. Have you forgotten the 
first evening you walked out to Tintajeux — that evening when 1 
told you the Bon Espoir was a good omen for our friendship ? ” 

‘ ‘ A fortnight ago to-day. I have not forgotten it.” 

“ I looked upon you as my friend before I saw you. I had 
heard your history — the history, it would seem, of your cousin 
Gaston ! I honored a man who had had the courage of his 
opinions. I respected, I drew to you on account of the wife you 
had chosen. And now, Mr. Arbuthnot,” exclaimed Marjorie hotly, 
” the comedy of errors is finished. I have learned my mistake, 
you see. And I trust that my apology has been sufficient.” 

This time Geoffrey broke into a fit of wholesome, unconstrained 
laughter. 

1 am afraid I see through everything, Miss Bartrand. Your 
apologies say too much. I have been treated with humanity by 
accident, and may count upon dark days for the future. That I 
am not married is my misfortune,” he added, watching her face, 
‘‘a misfortune which, if I could only thereby re-establish myself 
in your favor, I would gladly remedy.” 

Would you ? ... do you mean ...” 

And then, looking up into her tutor’s eyes, Marjorie knew that 
they were both of them talking un-wisdom, were trenching as 
nearly on the forbidden ground of sentiment as a young man and 
woman who had met for the hard study of classics and mathemat- 
ics could well do. 

“ I believe I got through some fair work, yesterday,” she 
remarked, with an air of cold business. As Wednesday is to be 
wasted on folly, we may as well lose no time now. It is your 
system never to praise, sir, — a good one, doubtless. Yet I hope 


IS MY VIBGIL PASSABLE f " IV 1 

yon will think my Yirgil passable. I promise you it was done 
without the crib.” 

Geff read the halting translation aloud, no longer holding the 
manuscript upside down. He did not think Marjorie’s Yirgil 
passable, and put the copy-book aside without a word of comment. 
He showed himself severer than usual over Greek aorists, was 
stringent, to cruelty, in regard of Marjorie’s shakiest point, her 
mathematics. But at last when the professional wmrk was over, 
when he had risen to take leave, Geolfrey Arbuthnot extended his 
hand to his pupil as the girl’s heart knew he had never done 
before. 

“You have tolerated me hitherto,’* he told her, “for my 
imaginary wife’s sake. Do you think you can tolerate me, in 
future, for my own ? ** 

With his eyes fixed on her face, her small fingers crushed in his 
grasp, Marjorie’s cheeks turned the color of a pomegranate. 

“You know . . . you ought to have been the other Arbuth- 
not cousin,” she stammered, glancing up under her long lashes, 
then drawing her hand away, warily. 

“I ought, you think, to have been Gaston? He would never 
have pleaded, as I plead, for toleration. Every woman living 
would tolerate Gaston, of her own free will.” 

“ Except Marjorie Bartrand. Pray make one exception to your 
rule. I come of an arbitrary and stiff-necked race. We — we 
Tintajeux people belong to minorities. We like, in most cases 
dislike, where we can.” 

“ Give me credit, for a short time longer, of being the other 
Arbuthnot cousin,” Geoffrey whispered as he left her. “ Dislike 
me only as much as you did on that first evening when you 
gathered roses and heliotropes — for my wife I” 


CHAPTER XXIL 


LINDA AS AN ART CRITIO. 

Wednesday morning’s sun rose cloudless. A few persistent 
fog wreaths lay, even as the day advanced, to leeward of the 
islands. There was an undue groimd-swell, although the surface 
of the water glistened, smooth as oil, when the high spring tide 
began to flow in from the Atlantic . None but an inveterate croaker 
could, however, prophesy actual mischief from signs so trivial. 
Lord Rex Basire declared aloud — certain of his guests arriving 
not as the time for his departure drew nigh— that the day must 
have been manufactured expressly for the subalterns’ picnic. No 
wind, no sea, a nicely tempered sun above one’s head, a favorable 
tide — ‘MVliat more,” asked Lord Rex, “ especially if one add the 
Item of a powerful steamer, could the never satisfied heart of 
woman require ? ” 

The heart of the most Venerable woman in the island required 
that there should be neither groimd-swell nor fog-bank. At the 
eleventh hour came an excuse, on the score of weather, from 
Madame Corbie. The post of chaperon-in-chief stood vacant. 
Happily for the youthful hosts, Rosie Verschoyle’s mother was 
faithful — a little white passive lady, accustomed to the iron rule 
of grown-up daughters, who only stipulated that she should lie 
down, within reach of smelling-salts, before leaving Guernsey 
harbor, and neither be spoken to nor looked at until they arrived 
in smooth water off the coast of France. Old Cassandra, in her 
scarlet cloak, was to the fore, with cans for fish, with crooks for 
sea-weed, with a butterfly net, with stoppered bottles — Cassandra, 
burthened by a sole regret — that she had left her harp behind. If 
these young people had wished, in mid ocean, to dance, how will- 
ingly would Cassandra have harped to them ! Doctor Thorne and 
his Linda were punctual ; so were the trio of pretty de Carteret 
sisters whom poor Mrs. Verschoyle, according to a trite figure of 
Speech, was to “ look after.” And still Rex Basire glanced vainly 


LINDA AS AN ABT CRITIC. 


173 


along the harbor road for the only guests concerning whose advent 
he cared. The steam was up; the skipper stood ready on the 
bridge. In another ten minutes the Princess of necessity must 
quit her moorings, and still the sunshine of Dinah Arbuthnot’s 
face w’as wanting. 

“You look frightfully careworn, Lord Rex,’* said Rosie Yer- 
schoyle with malicious intonation, as she followed the direction of 
his glances. “ Pray, has your lobster salad not arrived ? Is your 
ice melting ? Or does some anxiety even yet more tragic disturb 
your peace ? ” 

“ There they are — ^no, by Jove! only the men. Twelve feet two 
of the Arbuthnot cousins ! ** exclaimed Lord Rex, with frank dis- 
respect of Rosie’s sympathy. “ Is it possible Mrs. Arbuthnot can 
have thrown us over ? The thought is too atrocious ! ” 

The tall figures of Gaston and Geoffrey — twelve feet two of 
the Arbuthnot cousins — were descending by quick strides the 
stepway that forms a short cut from the High Town of Peters- 
port to the quay. Before Rex Basire’s disappointment had had 
time to formulate itself more coherently, a clatter of ponies’ hoofs, 
a rush of wheels, made themselves heard round the corner of the 
adjacent harbor road. A few instants, later, and the welcomest 
sight the world could, just then , have offered to Lord Rex was 
before him: Marjorie Bartrand, in her pony carnage, and at Mar- 
jorie’s side, fairer than all summer mornings that ever dawned, 
the blushing lovely face of Dinah Arbuthnot. 

“Have we to apologize? Are we really behind our time?’* 
cried Gaston, as Lord Rex came forward to welcome them at the 
gangw'ay. “ It has been a case of the fox and the goose and the 
bunch of grapes. My wife would not start without Miss Bartrand ; 
Geff would not start without my wife. I was not allowed to start 
alone. The most delightful weather ! — and the most delightful 
party,” added Gaston, looking at the sunlit world around him with 
his pleasantest expression. “ Miss Verschoyle, the Miss de Car- 
terets — Marjorie Bartrand! Why, all the pretty faces in Guernsey 
are assembled on board the Princess ! ** 

The four or five hours that followed were hours destined to be 
marked with a red letter in the calendar of Dinah’s life. She felt 
the youth at her heart, enjoyed the salt freshness of the morning, 
entered into the mirth and spirit of the expedition like a child. 
Gaston’s conduct was unexceptionable. Sketch-book in hand, be- 
fore they had quitted the harbor, he took his place beside his wife 


174 


A GIBTON GIBR 


— ^jotting down effects of sky or w^ave or passing fishing boat in 
his note-book. He remained beside her throughout the voyage. 
The pretty island girls, capital sailors all of them, chatted in pic- 
turesque twos and threes with their bachelor hosts. Lord Kex 
Basire devoted himself, with a show of perfect impartiality to every 
one. 

If this was growing used to the perils of a factitious world, the 
first plunge into a social vortex where more neophytes sink than 
swim, Dinah found the process distinctly pleasant. And I am 
afraid the thought of Linda, effaced for once, in grim earnestness* 
by all -effacing sea-sickness down below, failed to take the edge off 
Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot’s enjoyment. 

Herm, with its fringe of shell-spangled sands, was soon left be- 
hind. The high table-land of Sark became a fairy-like vision, 
hanging suspended, as on Mahomet’s thread, between heaven and 
sea, ere it vanished out of ken. After an hour’s steady steaming, 
Alderney’s tall cliffs were sighted through the haze; and then, 
shortly before one, the south-west swell gave signs of lessening. 
The Princess was to leeward of the Point of Barfleur, and lunch, 
served after a desultory and scrambling fashion, began to find 
hearty welcome among the watchers on deck. 

At the cheery whizzing of champagne corks old Doctor Thorne 
aroused himself from a comfortable siesta he had been enjoying in 
the bows, and came aft. The sight of Linda’s husband, a tumbler 
of Moet in his hand, his puggareed hat pushed back from his sun- 
shriveled Indian visage, brought back the thought of Linda 
Thorne to the general mind. 

“Mrs. Thorne! Shall Mrs. Thorne not have champagne sent 
to her ? ” cried Gaston, who was reclining, a picture of virtuous 
contentment, beside his wife. “ Or better still, now that we have 
a smooth deck. Doctor, shall Mrs. Thorne not come up into the 
light of day ? ” 

The old Doctor shook his head as he accepted a goodly plate of 
lobster salad from the steward’s boy. 

“Poor girl ! My poor dear Lin ! A typically severe case of 
mal de mer always. Stop a bit — no hurry — just give me a trifle 
more of the dressing. I have collected a mass of data about sea- 
sick persons,’’ observed the Doctor, draining down his champagne 
with relish, “ and I am wholly against any attempt at nourishing 
them. Quite a mistake to administer stimulants. (Thank you, 
Lord Rex, you may give me another quarter of a tumbler of your 


LINDA AS AN ART CRITIC. 175 

excellent Meet. ) A mistake to imagine persons as seasick as my 
poor wife can digest anything/’ 

“I think yon are disgracefully heartless, Doctor,” cried Rosie 
Verschoyle, in her thin gay accents. ‘‘Mrs. Thorne and dear 
mamma must require wine much more than all we well people. I 
declare it is positively shameful to think how we have been enjoy- 
ing the voyage while they were in misery. R'ow, who will help me 
carry something to our two martyrs below ? ” 

“ Who,” of course, meant Lord Rex Basire. Following the airy 
flutter of Rosie Yerschoyle’s dress, Lord Rex dutifully assisted in 
conveying biscuits, champagne, and sympathetic messages to the 
martyrs — as far as the cabin door. Though the deck was smooth, 
Linda showed coyness as to returning thither. Her belief in 
human nature, especially in Gaston Arbuthnot’s human nature, 
was, I fear, frailish The livid cheeks, pale lips, and sunken eyes 
of recent sea-sickness were tests to which Linda, under no condi- 
tions, would have dreamt of exposing a sentimental friendship ! 

“ Mrs. Thorne is quite too good — the dearest, most unselfish 
creature living ! ” Rosie Verschoyle announced these little facts 
before all hearers, on her return to upper air. “ Doctor Thorne, 
I hope you are listening to my praises of your wife. Mrs. Thorne, 
is not ill, not very ill, herself, but she will not leave my poor 
frightened mother for a moment. I call that real, quiet heroism. 
In glorious weather like this to remain shut up in the cabin of a 
steamer for another person’s sake ! ” 

“ Our good Smeot! She knows so well to efface herself.” 

There was a twinkle in Gaston Arbuthnot’s shrewd eyes. 
Possibly, as Rosie Verschoyle spoke, the words of Madame Ben- 
jamin’s eulogy came back to him. 

^ A league or two beyond Barfleur a French pilot was signaled 
for, the pilotage from the Point to Langrune being tortuous and 
difficult. Does the reader know the fairness of that little-visited 
strip of ITorman coast ? Fairuess at its zenith, perhaps, in April, 
when the orchards bordering the shore are heavy with white 
pear, or rose-pink apple bloom; when the blackthorn blossoms so 
lavishly that, if the wind be south, you may distinguish whiffs of 
the wild, half-bitter aroma far out at sea. But exquisite, too, on 
a late June day like this, the yellow colza in full harvest, the 
barley-fields ready for the sickle, the Caen-stone spires and home- 
steads standing out in white relief against the level horizon-line 
of sky. 


176 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


A French pilot was signaled for. After his coming the Princess 
steamed slower and ever slower, eastward. By-and-by — Langrune 
already visible across the expanse of yellowish sea — it became 
observable thaf^the vessel’s movement could scarce be felt by those 
on board. The iskipper stood consulting with the pilot on the 
bridge, the figures of the men at the wheel were motionless. There 
was a simultaneous hush in everybody’s talk, a momentary tension 
of the breath at the thought of something happening! And then 
came the blank, unmistakable order, Stop her!” Before leaving 
Petcrsport wrong reckoning had been made as to the difference 
between the hour of ebb in Guernsey and along the coast of 
France; the skipper had no choice but to anchor. Would the 
passengers await the turn of the tide and deeper water, or land, 
by help of the boats, on some rocks within easy reach, and trust 
to getting ashore across a tract of wide wet sand as best they 
might ? 

The stout-nerved Guernsey girls, accustomed to scores of bigger 
adventures at sand-eel ing parties and conger expeditions, laughed 
at the horrors of the position. With Cassandra Tighe as leader, 
these young women announced their determination of reaching 
the shore, forthwith, though not dry-footed. Among the chape- 
rons arose murmurs of contumacy. Poor Mrs.Yerschoyle, a ghastly 
figure, emerging tremulously from the cabin, observed that she 
looked on all voluntary sea-going excursions as a tempting of 
Providence. With a spot like L’Ancresse Common, not three 
miles from Petersport — L’Ancresse Common, where one could 
have had the society of our excellent Archdeacon and of Madame 
Crobie — why, said Mrs. Verschoyle, with the acerbity of mortal 
digestive revolt — why put oneself at the mercy of tides and pilots 
at all ? 

Old Doctor Thome was flatly rebellious. There was good 
chami>agne on board the Princess, thought the Doctor. There 
were Burmese cheroots — a warm sun. There was the ultimate 
certainty of floating up with the tide. 

‘‘If anyone be at a loss how to pass the afternoon hours, let 
him take a siesta, or inquire if the skipper have a pack of cards 
stowed away. You see the wisdom of my remarks, I am sure, 
Lin, do you not ? ” 

“ I see the wisdom of them for you and me, my dear,” said Lin, 
graciously. Under cover of a doubly folded gauze veil, protected 
by rice powder, a parasol, a well adjusted Indian shawl, Linda 


LINDA AS AN ABT CRITIC. 


177 


Thorne had at length committed herself to the cruel eye of noon. 
“My own election is to abide by Mrs. Verschoyle, whatever hap- 
pens. I am afraid we shall hardly win over the young ones, 
Kobbie, to our staid philosophy.’’ 

“ If Rosie and the Miss de Carterets land, I shall land,” said 
Mrs. Yerschoyle with dreary resignation. 

The poor little lady’s elder daughters were married. She had 
three girls in the schoolroom still. She had also boys. Chaper- 
onage at balls and picnics, nursing of measles or scarlatina, love 
affairs, school bills, breakages, — all came to Mrs. Verschoyle 
as the burthens of her widowed, many childrened lot, heavy 
burthens to be borne under sorrowful protest! “ If the picnic had 
only been at L’Ancresse Common,” she repeated, “we should 
have the Archdeacon and Madame Corbie with us, and need never 
have got w^et shoes at all.” 

A consultation with the skipper resulted in a general lowering of 
the boats. A quarter of an hour later the whole of the party, save 
the Doctor, were landed on the Smaller Cancale, a reef of rock sepa- 
rated by a mile of treacherous sands from terra firma, and upon 
whose limited area a crowd of Parisians of both sexes were fishing 
— no, were following “ la peche” (the terms are not convertible) — 
after the guise and in the vestments sacred to the Parisian 
heart. 

Mrs. Yerschoyle sank down on the first slippery point of rock 
that presented itself, vainly wishing, little though she loved the 
steamer, that her maternal duties had allowed her to remain there 
with the Doctor and the sailors. Cassandra Tighe started off, the 
lightest hearted of the party, perhaps, to hunt for zoophytes and 
molluscs among the tide pools. The younger people, all, pro- 
nounced themselves in favor of an exploring walk, inland, before 
dinner — all, except Mrs. Thorne. 

“ I mean to look after your mother, Rosie,” said Linda, removing 
her double folds of gauze, as she took her place at the elder lady’s 
side. “Please let me indulge my Indian laziness. Some one, 
positively, ought to stay with dear Mrs. Yerschoyle, and I like to 
be that some one. It makes me remember my queer old governess 
days to find myself among Parisians,” Linda was prone to these 
little bursts of retrospective humility. “ And then, there is my 
husband! Robbie, no doubt, will eventually drift up with the 
tide. Quite too charming to leave all us, sober elders together.” 

“ Sober elders ” — so Dinah realized with a contracting heart’— 


178 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


was a sufficiently elastic term to embrace Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. 
Before landing from the boats Gaston, with keen artistic vision , 
had descried some marvelously pretty fishergirl among the crowd c * 
French people on the rocks. iS’ot a real red-handed, rough-haire^. 
fishergirl, but the latest Worth idea of a duly got-up pecheuse, the 
very subject, Gaston declared, for his own meretricious pencil. 
He must make a stealthy study of her forthwith. And indeed, at 
this present moment, not many paces distant from Mrs. Yerschoyle 
and her devoted friend, Gaston Arbuthnot, sketch-book in hand, 
was already at work. 

Dinah lingered aimlessly. The desire of her heart was to stay 
beside her husband. Her pleasure would have been to watch his 
quick, clever pencil, to hear him discourse, in his light strain, 
about these foreigners whose theatrical manners and dress, over- 
whelming to her ill her ignorance, must to him be familiar. She 
felt the brightness of her day would be clouded if she left Gaston ! 
And yet, mused Dinah, troubled of spirit, do wives, in society, 
hang jealously at their husbands’ elbow, or watch their pencil, or 
listen to their talk with delight ? Would she expose herself, far 
worse, would she expose Gaston to ridicule by shirking the walk- 
ing-party ? 

An expressive glance, shot from Mr. Arlmthnot’s eyes, set these 
questionings only too sharply at rest. 

Look carefully in through the cottage windows, Dinah.” He 
bestowed on her a little valedictory wave of two fingers. Capital 
bits of ware are still to be unearthed in these parts of the world. 
If you see a likely cup or saucer, get Geoffrey to talk French for 
you.” Gaston Arbuthnot was a dabbler in most branches of bric- 
a-brac, and up to the present date had never lost money by his 
dealings. Mrs. Thorne, when we have got rid of these young 
people, I want you to criticise me. My beautiful fishing-girl grows 
too much like a figure from the mode-books.” 

Linda Thorne, promptly obedient, took up her position at the 
artist’s side. 


4 


CHAPTER XXra. 

A. SWAGGKB AND A SWOBD. 

It was the hottest, most deserted hour of the day when the walk- 
ing party reached Laiigrune plage, an hour when such of the 
young Parisians as do not follow la peche, drive donkey carts — 
those wonderful, springless, seatless Laiigrune carts — along the 
country roads, or start, by rail, to distant Trouville for toilettes, 
and distraction. Here and there were elderly ladies at work be- 
fore the doors of their canvas bathing sheds. In the road two 
portly fathers of families were solemnly sending up “ messengers ” 
to a very small Japanese kite some fifty or sixty feet above theii 
heads. Two other middle aged gentlemen played at battledore 
and shuttlecock. A few irrepressible boulevard lovers sat ovei 
their cards or dominoes outside the restaurant windows of tluj 
principal hotel. The shrill sounds from a fish auction held on thv 
monster slab of rough granite which constitutes the Langrune 
market-place, alone broke the stillness. 

Before one had thought it possible that dress or speech could 
have betrayed the nationality of the new-comers, up ran a brown- 
legged, tattered sand-imp, holding out a bunch of shore flowers. 
He announced his name, with some pride of birth, as Jean Jacques 
la Eerte of these parts, offering his services as cicerone to the 
English strangers. 

The gentlemen, without doubt, make a pilgrimage to La 
Delivrande, half a league away up the country ? At La Deliv-* 
rande is the church, and the altar where the miracles are wrought. 
There are the little ships of the sailors, the crutches left by the 
cripples who get back use of their legs. And for the ladies there 
are the stalls with the relics. Every one in the country,’’ ran on 
the child with voluble distinctness — Jean Jacques, a source of 
revenue to his parents, was trained to speak good French with 
the visitors — ‘‘ every one in the country who is sick gets cured. 
Every one who has a grand espoir goes to La Delivrande, and if 
he has faith, attains it. Or, so the cure says,” added Jean Jacques 


180 


A QIRTON GIRL. 


with a roll of his black eyes and a knowing shrug of the shoul- 
ders. 

At seven years of age even sand-imps, in these advanced French 
days, like to show we are no longer bound by the priestly super- 
stitions that were well enough for our grandmothers I 

Lord Rex made a free paraphrase of the child’s narrative in 
English, and was witty thereupon. Every one who is sick gets 
cured. Every one who has a grand espoir goes to La Delivrande, 
and, if he have faith, obtains it. Miss Yerschoyle, what do you 
say? Have you a grand espoir? Have you faith? Shall we 
make our pilgrimage, confess our little peccadilloes, and get cured 
together ? ” 

Miss Yerschoyle rebuked his flippancy, but with lips less 
severe than her words. For Rosie’s mood was a lenient one. 
Had not Lord Rex throughout the day conducted himself as well, 
really, as though that poor Mrs. Arbuthnot were non-existent! 
It was decided that every one had unfulfilled hopes, that every one 
stood in need of cure, and that a general confession of peccadilloes 
would be the best possible employment of the afternoon ! In 
another five minutes the pilgrims were on their road, ragged Jean 
Jadques leading the way toward the distant white twin spires of 
La Delivrande. 

The plage, I have said, was deserted; not so the lane, with 
quaint wooden houses on either side, which forms the High Street 
of Langrune. Here were bare-limbed, dark-faced fisher-lads, 
busily mending their nets ; clear-starchers plying their delicate 
craft in the open air; housewives roasting coffee; pedlars chaffer- 
ing over their outspread goods. Huge cats, with sleepy watchful 
eyes, the sun shining comfortably on their ebon-barred coats, 
reposed on the v/indow-sills. Lace-makers were at work, their 
head-gear antiquated as their faces, their bobbins twirling in and 
out the pins, unerringly, as though they were the very threads of 
fate itself. Everywhere was the din of voices. Everywhere were 
open doors, open windows; and within, such plenitude of frugal 
cleanliness, such polished oak cupboards, such well-scoured 
cooking pans, such snow-white bed draperies, such balsams and 
geraniums in brilliant scarlet pots, as might have put a Dutch 
village to shame. 

Marjorie Bartrand and Dinah paused beside one of the lace- 
makers’ chairs, allowing the more ardent of the pilgrims to get 
on ahead. A distinct shade of constraint was holding Marjorie and 


A SJVAOGJSH AND A SWOKD. 


181 


Geff Arbuthnot aloof to-day. They had not met since Tuesday’s 
friendly parting. No further misunderstanding in respect of 
Geif’s celibacy was possible between them. But a change had 
come across Marjorie’s manner toward her tutor. Geoffrey was 
sensible that she answered him with pungent and monosyllabic 
curtness during the whole of their outward voyage. And— seeing 
that among the knot of pretty Samian girls excellent temper 
reigned supreme, also that Geoffrey had joined the party for other 
motives than his own pleasure — one can scarcely wonder that this 
philosopher of four-and-twenty suffered himself, without over- 
difficulty, to be consoled. 

At the present moment, disappearing in the perspective of 
Langrune village, Geoffrey walked, to all outward seeming, well 
content, beside the prettiest and least wise of the three Miss de 
Carterets. Of which fact Marjorie took a brief and scornful note 
in her heart. 

‘‘ One can imagine a man’s becoming a senior wrangler.” She 
made the remark to Dinah as they watched the everlasting bob- 
bins whirl. “ Yes, even I with my halting Euclid and weak alge- 
bra (of which, no doubt, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot has spoken) can 
imagine a man’s becoming a senior wrangler. I can no more con- 
ceive of bobbin-turning than I could of a world in which two and 
two shall make five.” 

Dinah’s slower brain needed time for reflection. “ There could 
not be a world where two and two make five,” she observed with 
certainty. “ And lace-making, once you have served your time, 
steadily, is easy enough. Two of my cousins, down Honiton way, 
are lace-makers, and I learned a little of it when I was a child. 
The number of threads looks hard to strangers, Miss Bartrand, 
but it just gets to one twirl of the bobbins in time. Many of the 
W'orkers keep to the same pattern for life, when they know it 
well. After a bit, your fingers work without your eyes.” 

How horrible! One twirl of the bobbins, one pattern, for life I 
And to think that lace-makers do not commit suicide by scores ! ” 

I don’t know that there’s much difference between lace-work 
or wood-work or plain sewing,” said Dinah Arbuthnot. “ We 
have all of us, to go through with our day’s task, whatever the 
stitch may be.” 

The speech came so naturally, was so fraught with uncon- 
scious womanly humility, that Marjorie felt abashed. What real 
heroism, of an incomprehensible kind, must not Garten Arbuth- 


182 


A GIRTOJSr GIRL, 


net’s wife possess ? This girl of two-and-twenty who worked 
perpetual cross-stitch, who kept her tongue and spirit calm, who 
loved, with soul and might, yonder debonnaire gentleman of the 
handsome eyes and decorative smile, sketching charming Parisian 
fishergirls on the beach — under Linda Thorne’s criticism! 

If I speak hotly against needlework, it is that I am thinking 
of Spain, my mother’s country. In Spain, you must know, the 
miserable girls, to this hour, scarcely learn more than embroidery 
in their schools and convents, with reading enough, perhaps, to 
stumble through the announcement of a bull-fight, or decipher a 
love-letter. Of course,” admitted Marjorie Bartrand, coldly, “it 
is said that when a woman marries, in England or in Spain, she 
must do as her husband wills. I never see the force of that 
‘must.* I think a woman should do what is right for herself, 
with large trust in Providence as to the rest ! The question is not 
one that concerns me. Still, Mrs. Arbuthnot, one cannot help 
feeling indignant about all very crushed people. I am dead 
against slavery, especially when slavery puts on a domestic 
garb.” 

By this time they had passed the last straggling houses of Lan- 
grune. Fair level country, the fields already on the edge of har- 
vest, spread around their road. Along the wayside path -was a 
very mosaic of brilliantly blended hues, the corn-flowers blue and 
purple, the scarlet poppies, the white and gold of the wild camo- 
mile making up the purest chord of color. A slight southwest 
wind, dry and elastic after its transit over so many a league of 
sunny land, was invigorating as wine. 

“ How the spirit rises the moment one treads real solid earth! ” 
cried Marjorie Bartrand. “I feel at this moment like walking 
straight off to Spain, the country I love and where my life will be 
spent ! Why, with twenty francs apiece in our pockets, and camp- 
ing out, by night, under stacks or hedges, you and I might easily 
reach the Peninsula, on foot, Mrs. Arbuthnot.” 

Dinah’s geography did not embolden her to hazard a contra- 
diction. Something in Marjorie Bartrand’s tone jarred on her 
reasonlessly. It were hard to believe that she considered Geff a 
man likely to fall in love. Had not the conditions of her life for 
years put speculations as to Geoffrey’s future happiness on one 
side ? And still, a true daughter of Eve in every weakness belong- 
ing to the passion, Dinah was an inchoate match-maker. She 
would fain have seen the whole world blest with such fire-side 


A STFAGGEB AJS^D A SJFOBI), 


183 


beatitude as constituted her own ideal of highest good. With firm 
and true perception she had noticed a dozen trivial things of late, 
all proving Geff ’s imagination if not his heart to he in his teaching 
of Latin and Greek at Tiiitajeux Manoir. She had hoped that the 
notice taken of herself by Marjorie was an earnest of the pupil’s 
liking for her master, had furtively and with misgiving dug the 
foundations of many an air-castle that Marjorie and Geff, at some 
far-off day, might jointly inhabit. 

The girl’s diatribes against domestic slavery, her open avowal 
of love for Spain and of her hopes of spending her life among 
Spanish people, caused a troubled look to come on Dinah’s face. 

‘‘Your plans don’t point toward an English home, Miss Bar- 
trand. Yet I think Geoffrey has told me you mean to study at 
Girton ? ” 

“ To fit myself for my future work — yes. The Spanish school- 
boards are just as conservative as English ones. A young woman 
armed with Cambridge certificates would have more chance of 
coming to the front than another, equally strong-minded, who 
should rely on her own merits.” 

“Strong-minded!” Dinah ejaculated with horror. “At your 
age, with all the sweet happiness of life still to come, you talk, as 
though you approved such things, of being strong-minded ?” 

Marjorie swept off the heads from a cluster of wayside camomile 
flowers with the stick of her sun-shade. An expression of will 
which yet was neither unlovely nor unfeminine glowed upon her 
girlish face. 

“Let us understand each other better, Mrs. Arbuthnot. It 
may well be that our notions of ‘ sweet happiness ’ are not the 
same.” 

Dinah looked uneasy, and spoke not. 

“ Power — I will make a confession to you such as I never made 
before — power is my ideal of happiness. I want to rule, we will 
hope for good ; in any case, to rule, to be needed on all sides, 
sought after, distinguished — to see my name in print! That is the 
truth, no matter how I may wrap truth up in fine-sounding words,” 
said Marjorie Bartrand. “ That is the secret of my enthusiasm 
for humanity, and of my personal ambition. To lead others, to 
command, is my ideal of happiness.” 

“And mine,” exclaimed Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife, unhesitating- 
ly, “ is — to obey. For a woman to look up to another stronger 
life, to be ruled by a stronger will, gladly to take all little house- 


184 


A GIB TON GIRL. 


hold worries on herself — I speak badly, Miss Bartrand, but you 
guess my meaning — and feel more than paid by one kind look or 
word in return, to know that as much as she wants of the world is 
safe between four lowly walls, to have her hours filled with the 
care of others, to keep her parlor bright and cheerful, to hear the 
voices of the children 

Dinah's own voice broke; and Marjorie, who had watched her 
with looks of lofty comiDassion, softened involuntarily. 

So far from speaking badly, Mrs. Arbuthnot, you speak with 
very pretty eloquence. You draw a picture of constant giving up, 
which, if one could believe it to be from life, would I confess be 
attractive. It is drawn from life, perhaps ? ” 

“ Oh — no; I said, only, that would be my ideal of happiness,” 
faltered Dinah with a pang. 

Fancied or real, such an existence would never do for me. I 
have not much taste for obedience. I have none at all for house- 
hold worries. Babies I bar.” 

‘‘ Miss Bartrand! ” 

“Yes, Ido. Grandpapa and I visit about in our Pagan way 
among the Guernsey country people, and I know that I absolutely 
bar babies, of every shade and degree. I am not sure I would go 
so far as to injure one,” said Marjorie, stealing a glance at her 
companion’s shocked face, but I feel that they are safest kept 
out of my sight. I tell the mothers so.” 

“You are too young to know what you feel. Miss Bartrand.” 
There was a standstill of some moments ere Dinah recovered her- 
self enough to speak. “ Long before you are my age you’ll begin 
to see things differently. Young girls are a bit hard, I’ve some- 
times thought, in all classes of life, until the time comes.” 

“ What time, may I ask ? ” 

“ The time for having a sw^eetheart and getting married,” said 
Dinah Arbuthnot. 

From any other lips Marjorie would have regarded such a 
suggestion as an indignity. Dinah was so true a woman, had a 
soul so whitely delicate, that the speech carried with it no possible 
suspicion of offence. It was homely common sense, kindly and 
simply uttered. 

‘ ‘ What you say might be true of most girls of my age. If I 
am hard, it is not because of my youth, or my inexperience. I 
have ” — Marjorie’s face flamed to the hue of the poppies in the 
com — “ what the world is pleased to call a sweetheart. But for 


A SIVAGGUB AND A SWOBB, 185 

the interposition of Providence (I remember that interposition, 
night and morning, on my knees) I should be married, now.” 

“Unless he loved you above everything, you are best as you 
are, Miss Bartrand. In marriage it is all or nothing. I mean — 
I mean,’^ Dinah hesitated, “ no wife could be happy with half a 
heart bestowed on her.” 

“ Half! What do you say to a quarter, a fraction ? ” exclaimed 
Marjorie, hotly. “What do you say to a creature stuffed as the 
dolls are, with sawdust, in lieu of a human heart at all ? A 
creature well set up as regards shoulders, six feet in a measure- 
ment, with fine teeth, white blue eyes, yellow moustache,a swagger 
and a sword ? His would scarcely be the larger soul, Mrs. Arbuth- 
not, the stronger will which it should be a woman’s crown of honor 
to obey ! ” 

Down went another head of clustering camomile, felled by a 
well aimed stroke from Marjorie’s hand. Her eyes flashed fire. 

“And yet a wayward girl, scarcely past sixteen, and with no 
mother to give her counsel, might for two or three weeks, you 
know, be hurried into thinking such a man a hero. I was that 
girl, Mrs. Arbuthnot. Vanity blinded me, or the love of power, 
or something stronger than either. At all events, when Major 
Tredennis asked me, one fine morning, to be engaged to him, I 
said ‘yes.’” 

“ And the Seigneur of Tintajeux? ” asked Dinah, looking round 
at the dimpled, indignant face of seventeen. 

‘ “Major Tredennis comes of a race of gentlemen,’ said grand- 
papa. ‘ If Major Tredennis can make adequate settlements, and 
my granddaughter elects to spend her life with a popinjay, she 
may do so.’ ” 

“ And, with no better advice than that, you were engaged ?” 

“ I was engaged. Major Tredennis used to write me foolish 
notes. He gave me a ring I never wore. He gave me chocolate 
creams, and a setter puppy. He sang French songs to me, in an 
English accent. Looking back at it all now, I think the chocolate 
creams were the best part of that bad time, except, of course, the 
setter, whom I loved. When it was all broken off — for the owner 
of the white teeth and the sword was a right wicked craven, and 
should have married a girl in England who cared for him, without 
once looking at me; — when it was all broken off, and I had to send 
Jock back, I did weep, scalding tears, at parting from him. The 


186 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


only tears I have ever shed, or shall shed, in connection with love- 
matters.” 

‘‘ Wait ! ” was Dinah Arbuthnot’s answer. “ If I see you, as I 
hope to do, two or three years hence, it may be you will tell a 
difterent story.” 

Marjorie glanced at the yachting party, sauntering contentedly, 
a hundred yards or so in front, among the lights and shadows of 
the orchard-bordered road. Tliere was Lord Kex, outrageously 
devoted in manner to Rosie Yerschoyle, with whom he loitered 
apart. And there, a little divided, also, from the rest, was Gefl; 
Arbuthnot, well entertained, one must surmise, by the shallow 
talk, fascinated by the pink-and-white charms of Ada, the most 
soulless and the prettiest of the de Carteret family ! 

“ If such a revolution takes place, a dozen years hence, that I 
marry,” she observed, after consideration, “ the husband I choose 
shall be a head-and-shoulders taller than myself morally. No 
singer of ballad sentiment, no popinjay, with yellow moustache 
and a sword, and uniform, next time. If I take to myself a 
master, he shall be a man — with a temper, a will, a purpose in life, 
all nobler than my own.” 

Such a husband as Geoffrey would be ! The thought obeyed 
the wish in Dinah’s heart. 

“ And I must be first — first in his affection. I would have no 
rivals, past or present. If Bayard, himself, walked the earth and 
wished to marry me, Marjorie Bartrand, I would ask him if I was 
first. Yes, Mrs. Arbuthnot, I would ask Chevalier Bayard, 
himself, if he had looked at any other woman before he loved me; 
and if he had, and though my heart broke for it, I would refuse 
him.” 

A red light broke on Marjorie’s cheeks, her eyes dilated. The 
likeness to old Andros which came out in every moment of strong 
emotion, was never more marked than now. 

“ If w^e ask too much we may lose all,” said Dinah, not perhaps 
without a pang of dread as visions of Geoffrey’s youth rose before 
her. “ I never heard anything about this gentleman.” 

“Chevalier Bayard? The first gentleman the world has 
known ! ” 

“ But if he was put upon his word, yes, and though he stood 
with his bride before the altar, I think Chevalier Bayard might 
have to confess to some foolish fancy in the past.” 

“ I spoke of love, not of foolishness,” exclaimed Marjorie Bar- 
trand. Then as though quickly repenting her warmth: “ We have 
talked more than enough,” she cried, “ about a peradventure that 
will never become fact. Let us forget, with all speed, that so 
much nonsense has been spoken.” 

But the conversation was one which neither of these young 
women could, by any means, forget while she lived. 


CHAPTEK XXIY. 


REX BASIRE’S humor. 

A ROUGH paved village square ; green-shuttered houses, swelter- 
ing in the afternoon sun; a pair of open-work spires, delicate as 
lace, dazzlingly white as Caen stone could make them, silhou- 
etted against the burning sky; tattered children with mercenary 
hands full of wild flowers; a knot of British pilgrims, irreverently 
loquacious outside the church’s western door; gruesome beggars 
making exhibitions of wounds; honest peasant people; dishonest 
relic sellers— such were the salient features of La Delivrande at 
the moment when Marjorie and Dinah descended into its closer 
air out of the field-smelling, wind-blown road that brought them 
hither from the coast. 

“ We will ask Mrs. Arbuthnot’s opinion, and abide by it,’^ cried 
Lord Rex, coming forward a few paces to meet them. “ She will 
be far better versed in this kind of thing than the rest of us. 
Ought we to carry candles in our hands, Mrs. Arbuthnot, when 
we seek our cure ? There is a candle-stall conveniently opposite, 
and Miss Yerschoyle and I will head the procession, as penitents- 
in-chief.” 

“Please help to keep Lord Rex in order, Mrs. Arbuthnot. He 
is really doing and saying the absurdest things ! ” Rosie Yerschoyle 
must have been, surely, at the zenith of good temper when she 
thus addressed that poor Mrs. Arbuthnot! “Now Lord Rex, I 
command you to drop this talk about candles, instantly. Of course 
the whole business is a ridiculous piece of Popish superstition, 
still,” observed Rosie, with a certain largeness, “ one has one’s 
ideas. A church is a church. Positively, I will not speak another 
word to you, to-day, unless you behave yourself with decorum 
when we are inside.” 

The awfulness of the threat appeared, for the moment, to check 
Lord Rex Basire’s playful spirits. He made no purchase of 
candles. Save that he affected a sudden and a very marked 
lameness of gait, he behaved no worse than his companions on 
entering the church. Guided by ragged Jean Jacques, the English 


188 


A giuton girl. 


people walked up to a fretted stone screen dividing the choir from 
the nave. In a small side altar on the left was a doll, clothed in 
Avoven gold, unlovely of face, with eyes ‘‘ dreadfully staring,” with 
a croAvn of iDaper lilies, with a score of rushlights burning before 
her in a row — La Delivrande. 

Who that has traveled in primitive French districts can fail of 
knowing these little miracle chapels, their atmosphere, their 
votive offerings, their sincerity, their tinsel, their pathos ? At 
least a hundred graven memorials on the wall beside the Virgin, 
told the story of simple human hearts that had suffered, believed, 
of anguished human hopes that had here found fulfilment. Dinah 
Arbutlmot’s cheeks paled as Marjorie, in a whisper, translated 
the meaning of the inscriptions. Here a mother recorded her 
gratitude for her child, a Avife for her husband, a daughter for her 
parent. Here the names were graven in full, here in initials. 
Occasionally there was one AA^ord only, “ Reconnaissance^'' and a 
date. Dinah’s cheeks paled, her eyes filled. If she Avere alone, 
Dinah felt — puritan, heretic, though she were — she would gladly 
kneel and make her confession, lay bare her sorrow on the spot 
where so many stricken and weary human souls had cast away the 
sad garment of repression before her! 

Lord Rex Basire’s vieAV of the place and situation continued ir- 
resistibly comic. And the faces of his companions, the rose-pink 
face of Miss Yerschoyle not excepted, failed to condemn him for 
his levity. 

A heap of pious gifts, testimonials, in kind from the cured, 
lay, incongruously, as they had been offered, before the altar of 
the Virgin. There Avere crutches, big and small, a child’s reclin- 
ing carriage, models of ships innumerable, a Avooden leg — the 
stoutest faith might long for an explanation of that Avoodeii leg! 
Well, reader, with the fair church solemn and hushed, five or six 
black clad Avomen, telling their beads before the different altars, 
its only Catholic inmates. Lord Rex, it must be concluded, found 
the temptation toward practical jocularity too strong for him. 
Hobbling up to the altar, this humorous little lord stood, with 
bowed head, with contrite manner, in front of the lily-crowned 
figure for some minutes’ space. Slowly ascending a step he next 
deposited his crutch, a silver and ebony toy, upon the heap of 
Avorn and dusty peasant offerings ; then walked away with tripping 
resonant step, with head joyfully erect, down the Avestern aisle, 
as who should say, “ Behold me — a believer, cured.” 


BEX BA SIRE HUMOR. 


189 


Ragged Jean Jacques lield his mouth between two sun-blackened 
hands, showily pantomiming his appreciation of the Englishman’s 
costly waggishness. The subalterns of the Maltshire Royals tit- 
tered aloud. Alas! in a marching regiment, as elsewhere, has not 
human nature its weaker side ? Is not a duke’s son, with two 
inches of brain, and wit in proportion, a duke’s son, even when he 
jests ? The young ladies with one exception looked about as frigid 
as Italian snow looks under the kisses of an April sun. The ex- 
ception was Marjorie Bartrand. 

Away out of the church flew Marjorie, brushing against Rex 
Basire's elbow in her exit. She waited in the porch outside, 
eager beggars pressing forward with their wounds, children with 
their half-dead wild-flowers, relic mongers with their chaplets and 
rosaries— blest, ay, to the last bead, blest, “tout bonnement,” by 
his Holiness, away in Rome. By-and-by, when the last of the 
loud-talking merry-spirited knot of idlers had issued forth from 
the church, Marjorie fastened upon the offertder-in-chief. With 
luminous eyes, with drawn breath, with hands tightly clenched 
in her hot indignation, she scathed him thus: 

“ You have played a delicate bit of comedy, have you not. Lord 
Rex ? It was the finest stroke of humor to scandalize a few poor 
peasant women, saying prayers for their dead ? . . . For me,” 
looking one by one round the group, “ I felt ashamed — n;ore 
ashamed than ever I was in my life before — of belonging to the same 
nation as 3^011 all! I read once,” said Marjorie, “ in a wise book: 
‘Where we are ignorant, let us show reverence.’ The ignorance, 
only has been shown to-day.” 

Dinah Arbuthnot and Geoffrey, who had lingered behind the 
others in the church, arrived on the scene just in time to hear 
the last accents of this denunciation. Then, ere the culprits could 
utter a word in self-defence, away shot Marjorie’s arrowry figure 
along a shadowed bj^-street, away, neither stopping nor hesitating, 
along the old chaussee that leads from LaDelivrande Paris-wards, 
in an exactly opposite direction to the Langrune road. 

^ “By Jupiter! I was never so frightened in my life.” Rex Ba- 
sire’s limbs collapsed under him in well dramatised alarm. “ Have 
all Girton girls got dynamite in their eyes ? Does their speech in- 
variably bristle with torpedoes ? Is Marjorie Bartrand Protestant, 
or Catholic, or what?” 

“Ah, what!"' repeated Rosie Verschoyle, ever ready with a 
little amiable platitude “A hundred years ago the Barti’ands 
were Papists, remember. It is a moot question among the people 
who know them best what the Tintajeux religion is at the present 
day.” 

“ I know one thing,” cried Geoffrey’s friend, Ada de Carteret. 
“All through Tintajeux parish the Seigneur is looked upon as 
more learned than canny. When the country folk come near old 
Andros after dark, declaiming Greek, and with a couple of black 
dogs at his heels, they will run a mile round sooner than meet 
him.” 

“The Seigneur’s term of endearment for Marjorie is witch, 
when they happen to be on speaking terms at all,” said another 


190 


A GIBTON GIBL. 


voice. “Poor girl! In spite of her temper one cannot help 
liking her extremely. Who was it said of Marjorie that she had 
such an olive-like flavor ? ” 

“ You always feel there must be a fund of goodness in the dear 
child— somewhere.” This finishing note was given in Miss Vers- 
choyle’s thin voice. “ As to the lecture you came in for, Lord 
Kex, you deserved it richly. It is quite too — in saying this, I mean 
it — quite! to laugh at other people’s beliefs, even when they are 
most ridiculous.” 

And then they all sauntered off to the stalls, where Lord Rex, 
we may be sure, found ample scope for his veiled yet poignant 
irony among the crosses, medals, rosaries, and relics that had been 
blest, “ tout bonnement,” away in Rome, by his Holiness ! 

Marjorie, meanwhile, pursued her way through shadow and 
sunshine, unconscious in which direction the fiery haste of her 
steps was bearing her. When her temper had burnt out — in tl e 
space, say, of two minutes and a half— she perceived that she was 
once more in open country, alone among colza stacks and fields of 
ripening barley, but on a less frequented road, amidst a landscape 
with wider horizons than the road and landscape she and Dinah 
had traversed in coming to Lan grime from the sea. 

How good it was to breathe this wild, well-oxygenized air! 
With what glad senses Marjorie gazed about her across the 
plafns, rippling, as the sun lowered, in lucent amber waves, and 
shaded deliciously at intervals by rows of pearly, smoke-colored 
poplar! A family of peasant farmers drove by in one of their 
old-world Norman harvest waggons — coeval, perhaps, with Andros 
Bartrand’s sickle ? Friendly nods, gleaming smiles from sun- 
burnt faces, were bestowed on the little girl as the homely cart- 
load jolted on. She watched, with wistful eyes, until the 
waggon lessened, was lost to sight in the long perspective of 
white road. Seating herself beside a ditch under shadow of a 
solitary pollard willow, a sudden vision of vines and olives and 
Spanish sierras arose, with all the strength of inherited nostalgia 
in Marjorie’s breast. If the harvesters would only have carried 
her a league or two onward with them ! She had nothing of 
value in her possession but a watch. How many francs could one 
raise upon a watch, Marjorie Bartrand wondered, in some primitive, 
unsuspecting Norman town ? Enough, surely, living among 
peasant j^eople, and eking means out by an occasional day’s 
work at onion-weeding or colza stacking, to carry one down to 
the frontier, the cherished land of dreams. A letter could be 
sent, to relieve the Seigneur’s mind, and. . . 

And then glancing back along the chausee, Marjorie saw 
a man’s figure advancing toward her with steady quickness; 
a figure she knew over-well, darkly outlined against the chrome 
yellow of the sky. So Ada de Carteret was forsaken. Her 
heart went pit-a pat. She would have given a fortune to fly, 
yet stirred not ! One minute later and her nostalgia was cured. 
Longings for vine and olive and Spanish sierra had vanished, 
all before the unromantic English presence of Geoffrey Arbuth- 
not. 


chapter XXV. 

YOU— AND I I 


“ You have found cut a right pleasant spot.” Geff settled him- 
self cooly into repose among the long wayside grasses that 
clothed the opposite or field side of the ditch. “ Our friends, 
when they have bought themselves each a cross and medal, are 
going down to watch the Parisians return from fishing. You 
and I will have the best of it among the barley here.” 

“You — and I!” 

“ You — and 1 1 Does the expression displease fouy Miss Bar- 
trand ? 

“ If you have any intention of remaining you had better take 
out your pipe, at once, Mr. Arbuthnot.’* 

“ Why ? ” 

“ Because an idle man, his feet dangling over a ditch, and not 
smoking, would be a spectacle too wretched to contemplate.” 

“ The description may be worse than the fact. 1 am idle. My 
feet dangle over a ditch. I am not smoking. I was never less 
wretched in my life.” 

“ I spoke of such a person as an object of painful contempla- 
tion.” 

“ Is the spectacle painful to you at this moment ? Speak 
frankly.” 

“ I — I only wished to let you know that you might smoke if 
you chose.’* 

“ Thanks. I would rather do nothing to alter my present state 
of feeling.” 

And then they came to a full stop; a rather marked one. 

Marjorie spoke first. “ The charm of a spot like this” — she 
brought out each word with incision — “ is its solitude.” 

“ Solitude a deux. The French have such an expression, have 
they not ? ” 

Geff Arbuthnot asked the question, pronouncing his eu vilely. 

“ ‘ Solitude a doo-doo! ’ I am hopelessly stupid,” said Marjorie, 
holding her head aloft. “ A-dooI’ Is it meant for a farewell, or 


192 


A GIBTOJSr GIRL. 


what ? I really do not see the drift of the idiom — a quotation, 
perhaps, from one of the classic authors. 

Geoffrey was sensible that she had never been more dangerous 
than at this juncture, mutinous pride struggling with merriment 
on her clear girlish face, as she turned his terrible French accent 
into ridicule. He was sensible, also, of a new, an unexpected 
pleasure in being laughed at by her. 

“ Were you enjoying your solitude (without the ‘ doo ’) truly, 
and thoroughly, when I disturbed you ? ” 

“ Thoroughly, no. I had not got the flavor of folly enough out 
of my mouth for that. You relished, I hope, the exquisite wit we, 
English people, showed in the church, Mr. Arbuthnot ? You ap- 
preciated the fun of wounding simple people’s beliefs by deposit- 
ing our Oxford-street finery among the real piteous crutches be- 
fore La Delivrandc ? And to think that young women,” exclaim- 
ed Marjorie, waxing warm, “ are stigmatized, in masses, as friv- 
olous! How can they be anything but frivolous, with such 
examples before them ! ” 

“ Let us cast up both columns of the account. Would a man- 
no, as we are talking of Lord Eex Basire, let us say w'ould a fool- 
ish youth — display his foolishness among a bevy of pretty girls, 
unless they were ready to give him smiles as an encourage- 
ment ? 

I am sure Mrs. Arbuthnot would not be among the smilers.” 
Her beautiful face looked so good aiid calm, when the rest of us 
stood giggling there, before the altar.” 

“ My cousin is serious, a little over serious, always.” Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot gazed away at the horizon as he made this remark. 

‘‘ It would do your cousin a vast deal of good to run away from 
that feather-weight husband of hers. Look shocked, if you 
choose I I am in earnest. I consider,” said Marjorie, displaying 
her worldly wisdom with gravity, ‘‘that Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot’s 
character is thoroughly spoilt. He is a charming fellow, doubt- 
less. Still, everybody need not remind him of his charm to his 
face.” 

“ And 3’ou believe in retributive morality ? You think the 
curative treatment for a charming fellow is — that his wife should 
run away from him ? ” 

“My experience of charming fellows w'ould incline me toward 
heroic treatment. As we walked up from Langrune I asked 
Mrs. Arbuthnot to start with me on foot for Spain. With twenty 


YOU— AND I! 


193 


francs in our pocket, I told her, and doing a day’s work on the 
road whenever our resources ran low, we might get down safe to 
the frontier, in time. But Mrs. Arbuthnot did not seem to see 
it !” 

Dinah’s is not an adventurous spirit. If you would accept a 
substitute. Miss Bertrand, perhaps I ” 

“ Go on, pray.” 

“ Might be allowed to follow, with a stick, at a distance.” 

“ Keep your stick for England ! I would not be afraid on the 
loneliest road between this and Barcelona.” 

“ Without the stick, then — shall we start?” 

Marjorie shifted her posture a little. She became suddenly in- 
terested in a plant of marsh-mallow at her side. 

“When next I enter Spain, Mr. Arbuthnot, it shall be with 
dignity. When I meet my mother’s people I hope to be armed 
with degrees, certificates — whatever the English universities will 
confer on me.” 

“ Don’t go until your name has been bracketed high on the list 
of wranglers.” 

As Geoffrey made this venture on thin ice, he watched his 
pupil narrowly. One of the storm-flashes that lit Marjorie Bar- 
trand’s face into such frequent, such perilous beauty, was his 
reward. 

“You mean — never go at all ! Do you feel a pleasure, Mr. 
Arbuthnot, in throwing cold water over my dearest hopes and 
ambitions ? ” 

“ An enormous pleasure. Miss Bartrand. I have felt it from 
that first evening when you were good enough to hire me as your 
teacher at Tintajeux.” 

The girl looked away from him, her color changing. 

“ That evening when I had to receive you in state, to make 
formal speeches and courtesies, all my great aunts and uncles look- 
ing on through their Bartrand eyelids ! Do you remember our 
Bon Espoir ? He was an omen of better temper, perhaps, than 
has prevailed between us, since. Were you taken aback ? W as 
I quite unlike what you expected ? ” 

She asked these momentous questions, with the keen curiosity 
characteristic of the passion in its earlier days. But all the time 
she shrank from encountering Geff Arbuthnot’s glance. 

“You really desire to know ? ” 

“ Yes.” 


194 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


“ I will tell you, on one condition. What was your wish when 
your courtesied under the cedars, to the new moon ? 

My wish ! ” turning further and further away from him. 

Why, folly unrepeatable— the sort of nonsense my nurses taught 
me to say when I was little. Your memory is inconveniently 
good.” 

‘‘ Accurate to the smallest detail ! How clearly one can see 
the meeting of those four water-lanes, and the flowers you gave 
me, as I know now, alas ! for Mrs. Arbuthnot, and the ribbon you 
tied them with — the ribbon,” said Geff, coolly, “ which you will 
some day send me back for a book-marker ! Yes, the fairest 
summer evening of my life was the one when I first saw Tintajeux 
Manoir — and you.” 

And he believed his own words. Sure sign that the heart within 
him was sound — healthiest life at its core I Guessing at the con- 
fessions of that ingenuous maidenly face as Marjorie, half blushes, 
half wilfulness, persistently gave him her profile, Geoffrey Ar- 
buthnot had clean forgotten Lesser Cheriton, ay, and a drama 
played out there in which he took a not unimportant part. 

“ I think this Norman evening is to the full as fair,’’ said 
Marjorie. There are bigger sweeps of outline, there is more 
quality in the air than falls to our lot in the Channel Islands. 

Then, again, there came a pause, broken softly by the occa- 
sional hum of an insect on the wing, by the swaying of stalks, 
the whispers of the ripe and restless grain, by the chirp of the 
hedge crickets, by the solitary treble of a lark, lost, somewhere, 
pouring its heart out, in the sea-blue vault above. 

Marjorie could not be silent long. 

“ To begin at the beginning, what did you think of me when 
you got my first note — the two lines I sent in answer to yours ? 
Nothing very good, or you would not be so reluctant to tell it.” 

I thought,” said Geff, “ that you required my services as a 
coach, that there was a little affectation about your Greek ‘ e’s,’ 
'and that your name was Marjorie H. Bartrand ” 

“ That terrible signature of mine — the one bearable name I 
possess reduced to a D! You know, Mr. Arbuthnot, I hope, what 
D. stands for ? ” 

“Dorcas?’’ suggested Geoffrey, “or perhaps Deborah? We 
have a number of fine old Hebrew names beginning with D.” 

“ But I am not a fine old Hebrew. I am a Spanish woman, 
heart and soul, and I bear my mother’s name, Dolores. Grand- 


YOU-- AND I! 


195 


papa and I met an American in Paris, when I was younger, who 
used to call me ‘ Miss Dollars.’ The thought of that pronuncia- 
tion always makes me shy of bringing my beautiful Spanish name 
to the fore.” 

Dollars is more beautiful than Dolores.” Saying this Geoffrey 
took studious care to imitate her accent. “ Dollars is at least 
suggestive of human activity, of the market-place, not the grave- 
yard. Why should a child, with all the good chances of life open, 
have such a name as Grief imposed upon her by worldly-wise god- 
fathers and godmothers ? ” 

I speak of Dolores, not Grief, and — and you have no poetry in 
you, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot ! You don’t know all that a word says 
to us southern people. Think of plain Marjorie Bartrand — nothing 
but ‘ a r, a r ! ’ If I could only change Bartrand for a name with no 
‘ar’ init, I ” 

The supposition was rushing forth with velocity. Then abruptly 
Marjorie stopped. She colored to the roots of her hair. And then 
she and Geoffrey laughed so loud that the stilly air rang with their 
laughter. If these two young people did not actually tread the 
primrose path, they were within a stone’s-throw of it, ignorant 
though both might be of the route which lay so near them. 

“ That ‘a r’ is the worst of all your cruelties,” said Geff pre- 
sently. “ To show my greatness of mind I will return evil for 
good. I will tell you what you wish to know. As I walked out 
for the first time to Tintajeux, I had you constantly before my 
mind’s eye, Miss Bartrand. I saw you, with the vision of the 
spirit, every inch an heiress.” 

Every inch an heiress ! ” repeated Marjorie, abashed. 

‘‘With rigid manners, hair drawn back, Chinese fashion, and 
overwhelming dignity. Whenever people are of more than com- 
mon volume, I fancy that is the euphemistic term, is it not — 
dignity! ” 

“And you found me — a scarecrow.” She measured, mentally, 
and with self-abasement, the leanness of her unfledged figure. 
“ What did you think when a lank country child, in a cotton gown, 
and without either dignity or manner, appeared before you ? ” 

“I felt it was my duty to accept facts as they came. I sum- 
moned up courage, and mastered my disappointment with toler- 
able ease,” said Geoffrey Arbuthnot. 

His face supplied a postscript to the admission which caused 
Marjorie’s heart to beat faster. 


196 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


We must not stop here all day ! ” she cried, springing promptly 
to her feet. ‘‘Although, if one had something to eat, it might be 
pleasant to do so. Yonder, to the left, is Courseulles spire. We 
saw it — no, you were hemmed in by sunshades — I saw it from the 
steamer. If we take this footpath through the corn-fields, we 
might visit Courseulles and make a smart turn round the country 
before going back to our company and our dinner at Langrune.’^ 

But Geoffrey did not move. 

“ I will have my bond,” he uttered with tragic emphasis. “ I 
will never stir from this spot until you tell' me what your wish was 
when you courteeied the moon.” 

“ I would rather not say. You have the right to insist, of course 
— it was a bargain. But, please, let me oft*. Why should I repeat 
such puerility here, in the wise and sober light of day ? ” 

“ I will have my bond,” repeated Geoffrey Arbuthnot, tenaci- 
ously. “ I have made my confession in full. Now, do you make 
yours. What was your wish ?” 

A flood of shame by this time suffused Marjorie’s cheeks. But 
Geoffrey was stubborn. He exacted his pound of flesh to the 
uttermost. 

“I courtesied, as the children do, thrice. . . and each time, 
while you were talking, solemnly to grandpapa, I said, quite in a 
whisper, ” 

Don’t mind punctuation, Miss Bartarnd. It will be the sooner 
over. ” 

“ ‘I like my coach — may my coach like me!^ ’’ cried Marjorie, 
nearly in tears, but giving to the refrain the true sing-song of the 
nursery. “Remember, sir, when I was so inane I had only known 
you two hours, and — and I believed you to be the other Mr. Arbuth- 
not.” 

Geoffrey slipped down to his feet. As Marjorie was standing on 
the bank, it thus happened that their faces were on a level, and 
very near each other. Geoffrey observed, more closely than he 
had done before, the texture of her skin — delicate, in spite of sun- 
burn, as perfect health and Guernsey air could render it. He 
looked into the depths of her gray eyes, even in their quietest ex- 
pression touched with fire. He admired the character, so superior 
to all mere prettiness, of her serious large mouth. 

“ The wish has come true,” he whispered, in a tone never to be 
forgotten by Marjorie Bartrand, “ although I have the misfortune 
of being myself, not Gaston. Let me help you.” 

He held out his hands, but Marjorie, with her agile young 
strength, had cleared the ditch almost before his assistance was 
proffered. They paused a moment or tw^o irresolute, they dis- 
cussed a little as to latitude and longitude, and then aw^ay the two 
started, in the direction of Courseulles, across the corn-fields. 

A third figure, dove-winged, golden-quivered, walked with them, 
although tl.ey might not discern his presence. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


CUT AND THRUST. 

Never was a man surer of tumbling into little unlooked-tor 
sociabilities than Gaston Arbutiinot. Had he been shipwrecked 
on a South Sea island, I believe Gaston would have chanced upon 
an acquaintance there — some vanished shade from London club 
or Paris cafo would have seized him by the buttonhole before the 
day was out! 

He was buttonholed in Langrune-sur-Mer. When the Pilgrim- 
age returned from La Delivrande, Linda and her Robbie were 
found seated with Mrs. Yerschoyle on a trio of hired chairs before 
the hotel, taking their pleasure rather mournfully. Cassandra 
Tighe, her scarlet cloak conspicuous from afar, was dredging — 
happy Cassandra — among such rocks as the tide still left uncovered, 

Gaston Arbuthnot was invisible. 

‘‘ A real case of forcible abduction,” cried Linda Thorne, ad- 
dressing herself to Dinah. “ You are not a foolishly nervous wife, 
I am sure, Mrs. Arbuthnot ? You could philosophically listen to 
a story of how two pretty French girls carried away an English 
artist, against his will ? ” 

Dinah assented with one of her rare smiles. The knowledge 
that Gaston was finding amusement otherwise than in the half- 
clever talk, the too I'eady, too flattering sympathy of Linda herself, 
cast retrospective brightness upon the afternoon that his absence 
had clouded. 

From jealousy of a selfish or little kind Dinah’s heart had never 
bled. Earlier in their married life when Gaston still affected 
dancing, and as a matter of course went to balls without his wife, 
it was her usual next morning’s pleasure to scan his programmes, 
enjoy his sketches of his partners, his repetitions of their small 
talk — all without a shade of hurt feeling. Once or twice she 
hinted that she would fain accompany him as a looker-on. “ No- 


198 


A GIB TON GIRL. 


body looks on long in this wicked world, was Gaston’s answer. 
‘‘ You do not dance, you do not play whist. You have a brain 
under your yellow locks, and you are too young to talk scandal. 
Ballroom atmosphere is unwholesome. I would not hear of such 
a sacrifice.” And as it was not Dinah’s habit to pose as a martyr, 
she obeyed, trusting in him always. 

Beautiful, pure of soul herself, she simply honored the beauty, 
believed in the purity of soul of other women. Gaston was popu- 
lar, spoilt — an artist with an artist’s — more than this, with an 
American’s temperament. A degree of youthful immaturity 
seemed ever to lurk amidst his astute knowledge of life and of 
men. He had but a half-share, as he would tell her, of the fibres 
derived from long lines of bored ancestors. He sought diversion, 
for diversion’s sake. She had made no quarrel with the inexora- 
ble facts of her husband’s existence or of her own. If only she 
had been his equal, intellectually ! If she could have supplied 
him with the mental companionship he needed, or interested him 
in his cliildless fireside! Ah, could she thus have risen to his 
level, Gaston’s heart had been in her keeping still. Hence came 
the morbid unrest of her present life; hence the dread, increasing 
daily, hourly, strive with it as she inight, of Linda’s influence. 

I am afraid one gets used to most things, Mrs. Thorne. I 
have seen Gaston run away with so often, that I am not much 
moved by the thought of these pretty French girls.” 

Linda Thorne rose. She rested her hand confidentially within 
Dinah’s arm, much to Dinah’s chagrin, and proposed that they 
should walk together along the sands to look for Mr. Arbnthnot. 

“ Yes, I must positively tell you the who'e story. Your husband 
had finished his sketch of the lovely fishergirl. The young person 
was not at all lovely, in fact. But she was striking. She had 
distinct genre. Artists care for genre, you know, much more than 
for beauty.” 

Dinah resolved to question Gaston as to the truth of this. She 
resolved to cultivate distinct genre in herself for the remainder of 
her days. 

“ Striking — that word sums up all. The big cobalt-blue e3^es, 
that say about as much, in reality, as a china tea saucer, and are 
supposed by imaginative men to say everything ; blonde Iiair, 
worn in a pigtail, palpably not original, to her heels; complexion 
carefully toned to a shade one point short of freckles ; bare arms, 
akimbo, — excellently shaped arms, of course; a native prawi^ 


CUT AND THRUST. 


199 


flasket, and a fishing-dress from Worth’s. I got to know the type 
so well,” said Linda, in my governess days, during one summer, 
especially, when the Benjamin sent me to Houlgate with her 
children.” 

Dinah, who, as we have seen, had no genius for supplying the 
hooks and eyes of conversation, remained chillingly silent. 

“ Your husband had finished his sketch of her — an admirably 
idealized one. I have it here.” And Dinah, for the first time, 
perceived that Mrs. Thorne held possession of Gaston’s sketch- 
book. “ Let us look at it together ! ” impulsively, “ or are you — 
no doubt you are — blasce about sketches ? Well, well, it may be 
natural. Married to an artist, if one has no real, strong, natural 
talent for art ” 

“ I have no real, strong, natural talent for anything^’ inter- 
rupted poor Dinah, petulantly. 

“Oh — naughty! You must not say such things. I will not 
allow you to be modest. Mr. Arbuthnot tells me your needle- 
work is ” — Linda looked about her as though an encomium were 
hard to find — “ most elaborate ! In these days needlework ranks 
amongs the fine arts. Of course you are wild about this exquisite 
new stitch from Yienna ? ’’ 

“ I have not seen it. The only woolwork I do is old-fashioned 
cross-stitch.” 

“ Just fancy ! And Mr. Arbuthnot, I am convinced, spends his 
time — half his time — in designing quite lovely patterns for 
you ?” 

Dinah’s breast swelled as a vision of the Eoscoff wild roses over- 
came her. She made no attempt at a parry. 

“ If I had married an artist I would never have gone to the 
shops for patterns. Or rather, if I had married an artist, I would 
never have embroidered at all. I should have thrown myself 
into his ambitions, his work — have spent my life so utterly at his 
side. 

Dinah stooped to pick up a little pink shell from the strand, by 
this action freeing herself from Linda Thorne. She put the shell 
inside her glove, thinking she would keep it as a memento of 
Langrune and of this summer day that had past, so nearly 
without a cloud. So nearly — but the summer day was not over 
yet! 

“ All this time I am not accounting to you for your husband’s 
disappearance, am I ? My dear creature, it was really the drollest 


200 


A Gin TON GIRL. 


thing ! Robbie had not as yet floated up with the tide, and Mrs. 
Verschoyle and I, your husband with us, had made our slippery 
way across the rocks to mainland. Well, just as Gast . I 
mean, as Mr. Arbuthnot was putting a last touch to his sketch, 
up ran a little Frenchman, full dress, a rose and white daughter 
in each hand, and an enormously stout wife, with a bouquet, 
following. He threw his arms round your husband’s neck, and 
but for Mr. Arbuthnot’s presence of mind would certainly have 
kissed him.” 

“Kissed !’» 

“Of course. Have you never lived among French people ? It 
was some old artist companion of Gast . of your husband’s 
bachelor life. You can imagine the recollections of former joyous 
days spent in Paris as students together, the inquiries for mutual 
friends, now dead or married, the history each had to give of his 
marriage and present happiness ! ” 

“ I cannot. I am not imaginative.” 

It must be confessed that a tinge of displeasure was audible in 
Dinah’s voice. Every syllable of Mrs. Thorne’s unpremeditated 
chatter had wounded her, like a stiletto prick. 

“ Ah— and I am imaginative to my finger tips. We seem the 
very antitheses of each other, in character, as we are in looks.” 
Linda had really a very graceful way of admitting her own plain- 
ness, when occasion offered. “I can assure you I filled up a 
dozen little blanks in our Benedicts’ exchange of confidences. I 
traced out a full and rounded whole most satisfactorily. People 
may slur over half a dozen years in as many words. If nature 
has endowed you with imagination, you read between the lines. 
The barest outline suggests the finished picture.” 

Something in her tone would seem to imply that Gaston Arbuth- 
not’s married life had been a spoiled life, or so it seemed to 
Dinah’s irritated heart. Dinah felt that the half dozen words 
must have yielded latent hints of her own intellectual short-com- 
ings, hints which Linda Thorne’s talent for filling up blanks had 
developed into certainty. 

“The next part of the ceremony was the introduction to 
Madame de Camors and the children — two small Parisian 
coquettes, about the age of my Rahnee, who fell in love with Mr. 
Arbuthnot on the spot.” 

“ Little children fall in love with Gaston, always,” said Dinah 
hastily. 


CUT AND TURUST, 


m 


The family party was taking its departure, it seemed, under 
the broiling sun, to a children’s ball at Luc Casino. At a word 
from papa the small imps seized each a hand of Gas . ., of Mr. 
Arbuthnot, and dragged him away nolens volens. All children 
are tyrants,” generalized Linda, with a dismal yawn, occasioned 
probably by the recollection of her virtuously spent afternoon, 
” but these terrible French children are the worst of all. Perhaps 
it is in imitation of the Americans. I consider the way American 
infants are brought forward in public places is a disgrace to the 
century.” 

You think children without exception should be kept in their 
nurseries ? ” 

Dinah called to mind a group of four that passed her window 
on their road to the rose-show. She remembered a small ligure 
dancing with exultation on raiiibow-hued flounces. 

“ My dear soul ! Fancy putiing such a question to me, a 
mother ! Of course I make an exception of my own daughter. 
She is a good quiet little monkey,” added Linda; “although Mr. 
Arbuthnot is positively spoiling her, fast — I hope I impose her 
on no one. Children, as a rule, I look upon from the governess 
point of view. You know how ray bread was earned when I was 
young ? ” 

“ Mr Arbuthnot has told me that he first met you in Paris.” 

“Yes, in the domestic service of Madame Morse Benjamin. I 
got twenty pounds a year and my washing. I had to sleep under 
the roof, to play dance music, to remodel Madame’s dresses, to 
teach English to the three girl Benjamins, and a boy — ah, that 
boy !” said Linda, between her teeth. “If you think me like 
Becky Sharpe . . . confess, now, you do think me like Becky 
Sharpe ? ” 

“ I do not, indeed.” Dinah’s manner grew colder and colder- 
“ I never heard of Becky Sharp before.” 

“Well, if you had,” siid Linda, in high good humor, and stor- 
ing up all the little scene against future dramatization, — “ if you 
had heard of Becky Sharpe, and thought me like her where would 
be the wonder? I. was brought up just as Becky was, to live by 
my wits My mamma — I connect her hazily with sofa cushions, 
much white embroidery, an Italian greyhound, doctors, and the 
smell of ether — my mamma died when I was four years old. She 
lies in Brussels cemetery,” ran on Linda, drawing a hasty outline 
of a tombstone on the sand, “with Lady Constantia.Smith, and 
more than one side allusion to the peerage graven above her head. 
At the time she died we had not very definite daily bread. Still, 
my grandfather was an earl, and poor papa found one of his few 
consolations in making much of our nobility.” 

Frankness, it would seem, was Linda Thorne’s strong point, 
but Dinah was unmoved by it. The earldom dazzled Gaston 
Arbuthnot’s lowly-born wife no more than Linda’s personal con- 
fidences propitiated her. .Dinah had a child’s instinct for friends, 
and for enemies. She liked, she disliked, unerringly, and was 
too transparently honest to mask her feelings. 


202 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


Stooping down, she picked up another shell from the sea’s 
smooth edge. She sought once more to widen the space between 
lierself and her companion. Linda Thorne’s quick brain ob- 
served tlie movement, divined the intention. 

‘•Excellent, stupid, well-meaning, ill-acting young woman. 
And 1 have not a reprehensible sentiment at all towards her ! ” 
Thoughts like this shot through Linda’s mind, Linda who ideally 
had it not in her to know sterner passion than a drawing-room 
malignity. “With her yoiitli. her goodness, her complexion, her 
upper lip, to be jealous of poor, plain, cynical elderly me ! She 
needs a pretty sharp lesson. Children who cry for the moon de- 
serve to get something worth crying for.” Then, sweetly, “ You 
seem interested in shells, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot,” she observed 
aloud. “ You study conchology, as a science, perhaps, under the 
Platonic auspices of that severe-looking cousin of yours, Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot of John’s ? ” 

“ I study nothing, unfortunately for myself. I am quite 
ignorant,” said Dinah, lifting her face and meeting her tormen- 
tor’s eyes full. “ I am picking up a shell or two,” she added, “ to 
keep as a remembrance of my day in Langrune.” 

“ I should say you would remember Langrune without any 
tangible memento,” remarked Linda. ‘‘ Kather ungrateful, you 
know, if you did not.” 

“ How, ungrateful ? ” 

“ Well, because the picnic was given unconditionally in honor 
of you ” 

“ I do not understand you,” interrupted Dinah with ill-judged 
warmth. “The party was planned before anyone in Guernsey 
knew of my existence. I was asked accidentally — because I could 
be of use. Four or five girls had promised these young officers to 
come, and they wanted a married woman as a chaperon. This 
was what Lord Rex Basire said when he invited me on Monday.’ 

“ And you believed him ? You accepted out of pure kindness 
to faire tapisserie! Mrs. Arbuthnot. you are too amiable.” 

By this time Dinah Arbuthnot’s face blazed from brow to chin. 
Her conscience, over sensitive in the lightest matter, smote her 
sore. Was not a selfish longing for widened experience — nay, was 
not a certain distrust of Gaston, a contemptible sense of triumph 
over Linda — at the bottom of her acquiescence ? 

“ What unusually correct taste Dame Nature displays in her 
coloring this evening,” Mrs. Thorne gazed with decent vacuity at 
the sky, and away from Dinah’s face. “ Soft primrose, fading into 
pearly green, with just those few vivid touches of deep crimson. 
It suggests thoughts for a ball dress. And still beautiful though 
the effect is, I would rather not see that sort of shimmer on the 
water. If we come in for fog-banks somewhere about the Race of 
Alderney, it will matter little whether the picnic originated for 
the chaperons, or the chaperons for the picnic! How atrociously 
hungry this sort of thing makes one! Surely, dinner-time must 
be drawing nigh.” 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY. 

In two words — you have amused yourself, my dear.” Under 
cover of the friendly twilight, Gaston Arbuthnot pressed his wife’s 
hand as it rested, a little shyly, on his arm. “ A good sign for the 
future. You must enter into the world more, Dinah. You must 
cultivate this faculty for being amused; I desire nothing better.” 

Though fog-banks and disaster might lie in ambush about the 
Race of Alderney, nothing could be tranquiler than the fair sum- 
mer evening, here, on the coast of France. 

After an excellent dinner, vraie cuisine Xormande, served in 
the quaint, red-tiled salle of the Hotel Chateaubriand, the 
collected yachting party were now progressing along the 
pleasant sweep of road that leads to Luc. Luc, alone, among 
this group of villages, has a jetty, and off Luc the Princess 
lay, moored. Daylight’s last flicker was dying from the sky. 
Already deep fissures of shade intersected the white sand 
dunes bordering the shore, the sea lay motionless, a vague irid- 
escence far away, northward, the only foreboding of coming 
chance. Cassandra Tighe, a bold spot of color in the gloaming, 
had exchanged her dredging net for some ambitious structure of 
green gauze and whalebone. She flitted hither and thither among 
the bushes that skirted the path, moth-hunting. The younger 
members of the expedition, in groups of two, loitered slowly along 
their way, — for It was an hour when girlish faces looked their 
fairest, v/hen men’s voices are apt to soften, involuntarily! 

Dinah Arbuthnot, after a good deal of strategy, had contrived 
not merely to get possession of her husband, but to hold him, 
strongly guarded, and at safe distance from the rest, Linda 
Thorne, herself (and Linda had, at will, a longer or a shorter sight 
than other people), could scarce do more than guess at the out- 
lines of the two figures. The little lover-like fact that this sober 


204 


A GIRT ON GIRL. 


couple, this Darby and Joan of four years’ standing, walked arm 
in arm, could be known only to themselves. 

Yes Gaston, I was amused at sea, for you were there. And I 
was amused differently by Miss Bartrand. I wish you had been 
with us at La Delivrande. It was the first time I ever went inside 
a Popish church,” said Dinah gravely. “ And yet Popish though 
it was, I could scarce help saying my prayers as we gathered 
before the altar. The tears came in my eyes as I remembered — I 
mean, as I looked at the heap of offerings and thought of the sad 
hearts that had brought their troubles there.” / ' ^ ^ 

“ Was the smell very detestable, a smell one could sketch ? 
Had you beggars ? Had the beggars wounds ? Of course, votive 
churches and such things have to be done, in one’s youth. I am 
too old,” said Mr. Arbuthnot, “ my digestion is too touchy for me 
to run the risk of physical horrors of my own free will.” 

‘•I thought an artist should seek out every kind of experience.” 
Gaston had so often insisted upon the duty of pursuing inspira- 
tion among all sorts and conditions of men — still more of women 
— that the remark from Dinah’s lips had a savor of mischief. 

Every sort of agreeable experience, my dear child. The Dis- 
gusting is for the great masters. Mine is pocket art, a branch 
that the critics discreetly label as decadent, although lucrative. 
Besides,” said Gaston, “ I have sold my soul to the dealers. And 
the dealers have sold theirs, if they have any, to a puerility-loving 
public. An honest manufacturer of paper weights and clock 
stands needs nothing but prettiness — I won’t say beauty — the 
prettiness of a Parisian masquerading as a fishergirl ! ” 

‘‘ Or of Parisian children dancing at an afternoon ball. Mrs. 
Thorne told me about yoTir meeting with some old student 
acquaintance, and how his daughters led you away captive.” 

“ Small tyrants! I had to dance four dances with each of 
them, and then be told I was ‘ un Monsieur tres paresseux ’ for 
my reward. And so Mrs. Thorne and you are becoming better 
friends,” observed Gaston Arbuthnot, looking hard through the 
veil of twilight at his wife’s reluctant face. “ She is a dear good 
soul, is she not? So bright, so spontaneous! Really, I think 
that is Mrs. Thorne’s crowning charm — her spontaneity.” 

am no friend of hers.” Dinah’s voice had frozen. ‘‘I did 
not like Mrs. Thorne at first. I dislike her now.” 

Impossible, Dinah — impossible. A woman with your face 
should dislike no created thing.” 


GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY. 


205 


** I dislike her because her words sting even when they sound 
softest, because she will never look at one straight. I dislike 
her,” said Dinah, feeling her cheeks burn with shame and indig- 
nation, “ because she calls you ‘ Gaston ’ when she speaks of 
you.” 

At this terrible climax Mr. Arbuthnot laughed, so heartily that 
the quiet undulating sand hills echoed again. Far ahead Mrs. 
Linda might perhaps have caught the ring of his voice, have mar- 
veled what subject people who had been married -four mortal years 
could find to laugh about. 

“ This is a black accusation. Happily, whatever her sins in my 
absence, Mrs. Theme does not call me ‘ Gaston’ to my face.” 

Dinah was silent. Gaston’s assurances had never carried the 
same weight with her since Saturday’s rose-show, the occasion 
when she learned of midnight adjournments to Doctor Thorne’s 
house, and of the singing of French songs after a certain mess 
dinner. Her own conscience was rigid. To suppress a truth was, 
according to Dinah’s code, precisely the same as to utter an un- 
truth. She allowed no margin for her husband’s offhand histories 
— as a woman of larger mind would possibly have done. She 
could not see that carelessness, a quick imagination and an intense 
love of peace, were factors sufficiently strong to account for any 
little variations that might now and again creep into Gaston Ar- 
buthnot ^s domestic confidences. 

“ Of that I cannot judge. I suppose I ought not to care what 
Mrs. Thorne does or says in my absence.” 

“ Of cour.'5e you ought not. The speech is worthy of your 
thorough common sense, Dinah.” 

“ But Mrs. Thorne calls you ‘ Gaston ’ to me, and I think it a 
very wretched, unkind thing to do. I think it mean.” 

“You ought not to think of it at all. Artist people are called 
by the first name that comes to hand.” 

“ Mrs. Thorne is not an artist. ” 

“ She remembers me, in the old days when I knew Camors, as a 
budding one.” 

“ And she corrects herself with over care. Having once said 
‘ Gaston ’ it would be better not to go back to ‘ Mr. Arbuthnot.’ ” 

“ Ah, there my dear girl, you are too strong. If Linda Thorne 
excuses, she accuses herself, although I must confess, I don’t see 
the heinousness of her crime. You are becoming a casuist, 
Dinah.” 


206 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


** Am I ? It seems to myself that I am remaining what I always 
was.” 

They walked on, after this, mutually-tacitiirn. The interest 
seemed gone from their talk. At last, just as they neared the 
first lights of Luc village, Dinah’s fingers closed with significant 
tightness on her husband’s arm. 

“ I have an important word to say to you, Gaston. All through 
our walk I have been wishing to bring it out, but I had not the 
courage.” 

“ Someone else calls me by my Christian name, perhaps ? Or 
are we only to discuss more enormities of Linda Thorne’s ? ” 

There was a threat of impatience in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice. 
This little running accompaniment of domesticity gave a quite 
new character, he decided, to picnics, viewed as a means of social 
plesaure. 

I was not thinking of Linda Thorne. I wanted lo ask — Gaston 
forgive me — if you would keep nearer to me till we get back to 
Guernsey ? ” 

“ Nearer ! Will not everybody be near everybody else on board 
the steamer *? Don’t, I beg, ask me to do anything absurd,” he 
added, with emphasis. You have no idea how ready one’s best 
friends are to laugh at one, under given circumstances.” 

“ But if you were just to stop at my side on board — I mean, so 
that no one else could come near me.” 

“I will do nothing of the kind. You have no perception of the 
ridiculous, Dinah. It is a want in your nature. A woman with 
the slightest sense of humor would never wish her husband to be 
demonstratw'e before an audience.” 

“ Demonstrative ? ” 

“ Jealous might be nearer the mark. A variety of readings 
could be given as to the miserable wretch’s motives in such a 
position. Jealous — of little Kex Basire, probably ! ” 

Gaston Arbuthnot laughed. This time his laughter had no very 
hearty sound. 

‘‘You must learn to be self-reliant,” he w^ent on presently. 
“Your first lesson in worldliness was to be taken to-day, remem- 
ber. Well, you must go through with it ! I was not especially 
anxious for you to join the party.” 

“ You Avere not. I came to please myself only.” 

“ And you have pleased yourself, and me. You are the most 
charming woman present ; and let me tell you these handsome 


GliOWING OLD GllACEFULLY. 


207 


Guernsey girls are formidable rivals. I am proud of you. The 
opening page of the lesson is a success. Don’t spoil it, Dinah, 
by picking a childish quarrel with me now.” 

“lam^proudof you!” — the unexpected praise sent a thrill 
through Dinah’s heart. 

Her petition to Gaston to keep near her was made in a very 
different spirit to that of childish quarreling. On the road back 
from La Delivrande to Langrune it had come to pass that the 
walking party, following a natural law, broke up into couples, 
and that Dinah, unprotected by Marjorie or by Geff, found herself 
alone with Lord Kex Basire. Being, for his age, a very thorough 
man of the world. Lord Rex uttered no word at which Mrs. Ar- 
buthnot, or any sensible woman, could take umbrage. But his 
manner, his tones, his looks, were eloquent with a feeling which, 
to her straightforward, rustic perception of things, constituted an 
offence. 

Ill the matter of admiration, Dinah, as 1 have said, was neither 
prude nor Puritan. She knew the greatness of her gift. It was 
an every-day experience to see heads turn, wherever she walked 
upon the earth, and, being a quite natural and single-hearted 
daughter of the common Mother, such acknowledgment of her 
beauty had never yet been repugnant to her. But the admiration 
covertly expressed by Rex Basire as they sauntered slowly through 
checkered light and shadow back to Langrune, was of another 
nature. Instinct warned Dinah that, if she were an unmarried 
girl, she might well read on this foolish young man’s face and in 
his manner signs of love. 

And the warning to Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife was in itself a 
humiliation. 

She was unacquainted with the weapons by means of which, 
differently nurtured women parry equivocal attention. Save from 
Linda Thorne’s lips to-night she had never even heard the term 
“Platonic.” Geoffrey was her only friend. Of men like Lord 
Rex Basire she knew nothing. To gaze and hint and sigh after 
this tormenting fashion might, she thought, be a received habit 
among young officers of his rank. And the torment would soon 
be over — if Gaston would but keep near her on board the Prin- 
cess I Once safely back in Guernsey, and Dinah felt that she 
could take absolute care of herself for the future. There should 
be no more lingering afternoon visits, no more instruction in wool- 
work for Lord Rex Basire. Of the lesson learnt to-day one para- 


208 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


graph, at least, was clear, should be reduced to practice before 
another twenty-four hours went by. If Gaston would only keep 
near her in the interval ! 

But at his praise she forgot everything. In the sweetness of 
that unlooked-for avowal, “ J am proud of you,^^ all dre^d of the 
future, all unpleasant recollections of the past, were swept clean 
away out of Dinah’s brain. She would not risk the moment’s 
happiness by another word. Her hand trembled, as though they 
had gone back to the old romantic days at Lesser Cheriton, as it 
rested on Gaston’s arm. 

‘‘Proud of me! Ah, my love,” she whispered, “I hope that 
you and I will never have a worse quarrel than this while we 
live.” 

And when the pair of married sweethearts emerged into the 
glare of lamps outside Luc Casino, Dinah’s face was radiant. 
Lord Rex, devotedly attentive at the moment to pretty Rosie 
Yerschoyle, saw, and felt mystified. Decidedly, the Methodistic 
heart, like the Methodistic conscience, was a book wherein Rex 
Basire might not read. 

Linda Thorne approached at once; a tall figure, diaphanous, 
graceful, in the lamplight. An Indian shawl was on Linda’s arm, 
one of those exquisite dull-hued caclieinires capable of investing 
the plainest woman with ephemeral poetry. Her hand held a 
bunch of wild flowers, a long trail of bindweed was twined, by 
fingers not unversed in millinery, round her hat. 

“ I hope you approve my ball attire ? ” She asked this with a 
little curtsey, her eyes addressing Gaston, rather than Gaston’s 
wife. “ Our hosts tell us that we have all free entrance to the 
Casino, the result, I suspect, of some liberal bribe to the Adminis- 
^ tration. Really, the way our subalterns have preconcerted every 
detail of their picnic has quite a Monte Christo flavor. You are 
engaged to me, remember, Mr. Arbuthnot, for your first waltz. 

“ There will be neither first nor last, Mrs. Thorne. I exhausted 
the very small dancing power that is in me on Hortense and 
Eiilalie this afternoon. I have not waltzed with a partner, over 
seven, for years,” added Gaston. “ My step dates from the days 
of Louis Philippe.” 

Nevertheless he moved away from Dinah; he followed whither- 
soever Mrs. Thorne might choose to lead. 

She chose the Luc dunes — that broad belt of wind-blown sand, 
held together by coarse grasses, or sea thistles, which stretches 


GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY. 


209 


the entire length of the straggling village and forms a welcome 
contrast to the burnt-up turf terrace, with burnt-up geraniums, 
mildewed urns, and peeling stucco goddesses of loftier watering- 
places. This evening Luc was merry-making- There were fire- 
works, there was a procession of torches, one of those ever- 
recurring processions by which the hearts of Parisian children, 
big and little, are gladdened at the sea-side. Tiny figures 
marched, two and two, with Chinese lamps along the village 
causeway. A band of small boys evoked martial melody from 
drum and fife. Catherine-wheels rotated, rockets scurried up 
into space. By-and-by an artfully constructed bonfire of colza 
stalks flared up in the centre of the place. Hand linked in hand, 
tfie children danced around it. 

“ Nous irons aux hois, 

Les lauriers sont coupes.’’ 

Their shrill voices rang across the dunes. Gaston Arbnthnot 
could descry his friends, Hortense and Eulalie, wildly circling 
around the red flames with the rest. As he did so, he thought 
involimtarily, of his sketch-book, forgotten from the moment 
when the children laid violent hands uj)on him, hours ago, until 
this instant. 

‘‘ Oh, I know! Your sketch-book is gone,” cried Linda, archly, 
as he felt in pocket after pocket. “ This is the Nemesis that falls 
on creatures of impulse, Mr. Arbuthnot.” 

“ But it is no joking matter. Every memorandum I have made 
during the last month — gone.' ” 

For once, Gaston’s voice was tragic. He knew full well the 
market value of those rough notes of his 

“ Every memorandum, — from your first bit of Samian still life, 
an old market-woman dozing, knitting-pins in hand, at her stall, 
down to our fishergirl of the Boulevards. Taking into account 
the studies of Kahnee and of myself, there must be literally scores 
of valuable jottings in that book. 

‘‘You are laughing at me? No, I divine! You have taken 
care of my book, Mrs. Thorne, like the dear good ” 

Fortunately, Gaston Arbuthnot broke off. Would Mrs. Thorne, 
would any woman, still conscious of youth and charm, forgive the 
man who, in exuberance of gratitude, should say to her, “ like 
the dear good creature I know you to be ?” 

“ I have taken care of your sketches,” she answered, drawing 


210 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


the book fortli from beneath her cachemire. 1 have done more. 
You ask, sometimes, why I always carry a housewife in my pocket. 
Ton shall see the part my hoiisew’ife has played to-day. While I 
sat quietly with Robbie and Mrs. Yerschoyle (the young people, 
very rightly^ enjoying themselves elsewhere) I sewed all your 
ragged leaves together for you — thus.” 

Linda Thorne wes a notably clever worker. Perhaps the length 
of her stitches, the breadth of her hems, were not always in 
accordance with the orthodox feminine standard. She could 
effect things with her needle — such as fine-drawing a rent in 
cloth, or improvising an anchorage for a buttonless collar — which 
might be the despair of many a mistress of the craft. She did her 
stitching wdth brains. 

At an out-of-the-way Indian station, so the legend ran, Mrs. 
Linda, under stress of some unlooked-for gayety, once manufac- 
tured an evening waistcoat for her Robbie, and a pair of neat 
white satin boots for herself at a sitting. 

“ This is capital !” cried Arbuthnot joyfully, recovering posses- 
sion of his sketches. “Each page hinged on with a splendid 
contrivance of red silk to the dislocated remains of back. I have 
often wanted Dinah to devise some sort of surgery for my veteran 
sketch-books. She must take a lesson by this.” 

“ Oh, no, no! Mrs. Arbuthnot is a far better needlewoman 
than I am. When I sew^ anything tolerably,” said Linda, “ it is 
by accident. I must have a motive for what I do. If I lived 
with — I mean, now, if dear Robbie w^as an artist, it would be my 
passion to help him in all the mechanical part of his work. If I 
were staying with you — and Mrs. Arbuthnot — you would discover 
that I can, really, in my way be useful. Michael Angelo, himself, 
must have had a poor obscure someone to grind his paints for 
him.” 

The pathetic image of Robbie as an artist made Gaston laugh 
inwardly. He was not struck by the humor of hearing his own 
name coupled witli Michael Angelo’s. Nay, it might be well, he 
thought, if Dinah felt this passion of unselfish helpfulness, well, 
if Dinah occasionally gave him the kind of praise he got from 
Linda Thorne. For Dinah never flattered. Her words of en- 
couragement, unlettered country girl though she was, were full of 
soundest criticism. There was no honey in them. True love has 
its intuitions. Dinah knew that to feed this man on constantly 
sugared words was to poison him. She would gladly have seen 


GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY. 


211 


in Gascon a noble discontent, gladly have listened to less frank 
avowals that he had found his level, and got on pretty tolerably, 
there ! Dinah, in short, was not a delightful acquaintance, but a 
steadfast, loyal wife. And her praise, in common with that of 
other steadfast wives, was apt to take the wholesome bitterness 
the slightly sub-acid flavor of a tonic. 

“ Michael Angelo. — My dear Mrs. Thorne, how much, how very 
much you over-estimate me! If you spoke of me as imitating, 
from afar, the little affected prettinesses of a Greuze, the compli- 
ment w'ould be too high.’' 

“ I fixed my standard for you years ago, Mr. Arbuthnot. In 
the days when you used to thank me — me, a governess — for play- 
ing dance-music at Madame Benjamin’s, I had my convictions as 
to the place you would one day occupy in Art.” 

At other times — on the morning, for instance, when we first 
saw the Arbuthnot trio in the garden of Miller’s Hotel — Linda 
remembered her aspirations as to the place her friend would, one 
day, hold in the House of Commons. But Gaston, if he noted the 
discrepancy, passed it generously over. Hard for a man to believe 
a charming woman insincere, simply because she a little over- 
estimates his own genius ! 

“ Those light-hearted salad days! When I was with de Camors 
this afternoon ” 

“The effusive little Frenchman who so nearly kissed you ? ” 

“ As long as I forgot the children, and the twelve stone of 
mamma, and the fact that de Camors, himself, is growing bald I 
could have believed he and I were si x-and- thirty again. Six-and- 
thirty used to be the sum of our joint ages.” 

“ Do not talk of age. It is a subject about which a man may 
jest, while a woman just breaks her heart.” 

And Linda extended tow^ards him her thin adroit hands, clasped 
in a pose that she had studied, not unsuccessfully, as one of 
pained entreaty. 

“ Women are younger, relatively, than men,” answered Gaston, 
with the sincerity of his sex. “ When I was two-and-twenty, 
Dinah’s age, I knew more of the world than I know now. Where- 
as my wife ” 

“Ah! your wife,” interrupted Linda Thorne, the mask for a 
moment dropping, the voice hardening. “I was thinking of liv- 
ing, palpitating, flesh-and-blood women — inhabitants of a world 
where nothing is faultless save over-faultless perfection. I — I 
mean,” she went on rapidly recovering her self-control, “that at 
thirty (and I am yjast thirty, alas! who looks at me under broad 
daylight, but must see it ?) — at thirty a man is scarcely in the noon- 
day sun — a w'omaii already feels the breath of evening. Her one 
chill hope is — to grow old gracefully. Mrs. Arbuthnot is a girl, 
still.” 

“And you — were a child when I first knew you in Paris,” ob- 
served Gaston, cleverly quitting the dangerous territory across 
whose borders he had been betrayed. “ How natural it seems, 
Mrs. Thorne, that we should be walking together, you and I, in 


212 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


the old country, with the old language round us again * Do you 
hear what the children are singing down on the sands yonder ? ” 
Linda set herself to listen, her expressive hands clasped, her 
face bowed. 


Nous irons aux bois, 

Les lauriers sont coupes,” 

shouted the shrill young Gallican voices in the distance. 

Mr. Arbuthnot repeated the nursery rhyme, as Mnrger wove it 
into his delightful “ Letter to a Cousin.’’ 

“ Nous n’irons plus aux bois. Les lauriers sont coupes. 

Nous n’irons plus aux bois, oh, ina cousine Angele!” 

The lady at his side bowed her face lower, and believed, in all 
integrity, that she was about to be overtaken by tears. Mrs. 
Linda, to do her justice, was not of a lachrymose temperament. 
At the zenith of their boy and girl flirtation, years ago, she had 
never shed a tear for Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot; until he appeared 
wdth his beautiful wife, had, indeed, clean forgotten her youthful 
weakness and his existence. But she possessed considerable im- 
agination, a gloss of surface sentiment. She was also an insatiate 
novel reader, and had fallen into the habit of perennial strong 
emotion, leading nowhere. She could realize how a woman who 
had loved ought to feel, as she recalled past happiness with the 
lover of the past — both married, and one, alas! fast nearing an 
age when the most pathetic drama turns, without help from the 
burlesque writers, into parody. 

Linda Thorne believed herself to be on the brink of tears. Gas- 
ton Arbuthnot believed so, too, and his heart could not but soften 
^ over the poor thing’s impressibility. So widely different in effect 
I are tears shed in bitter earnest by one’s wife, and tears shed in 
” ■ pretty make-believer by the wife of another man. 

‘‘Do you hear, Mr. Arbuthnot — the dancers have changed 
^ their tunef ” She asked this as the children, eddying like spirit- 
figures in an opera scene round the fire, broke into a new measure, 

Marie, soak thy bread in wine !^’ — universal refrain of all 
French children from the Pyrenees to the Channel. “ ‘ Marie, 
soak thy bread ! ’ How^ that foolish rhyme brings back the 
Benjamins’ salon, and my place behind the piano, and you, Mr. 
Arbuthnot, handing round refreshments with the small slave- 
driver, Moise! ‘Marie, soak thy bread’ . . . Alas!” — Mrs. 
Thorne’s utterances grew mystic^— “ We women have to soak our 
bread in sour enough wine, have w^e not ? ” 

“ The Benjamin refreshments — sugar-water, orgeat,” mused 
Gaston Arbuthnot, keeping safely to the practical. “Yes, those 
were charming evenings, especially when Papa Moise did not 
sing. I remember, as though ’twere yesterday, how my poor 
mother used to suspect Madame Benjamin of putting bad almonds 
in the orgeat.” 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


FOR AULU LANG SYNE. 

Meantime, whilst this mature pair of sentimentalists recalled 
the past, under the starlight, the younger people, sound of heart 
and limb, were making the most of the present inside the walls of 
Luc Casino. Fine weather for their voyage, an excellent French 
dinner, and now a ball, with distractingly pretty girls for partners, 
what further enjoyment could hearts as light as the hearts of the 
subaltern hosts desire ? 

Lord Rex, only, played spectator. While Rosie Yerschoyle 
danced waltz, polka, American, to outward seeming in gayer 
spirits than her wont. Lord Rex remained fixed in his attendance 
on Mrs. Arbuthnot, beside one of the open ballroom doors Dinah 
was curiously staunch of purpose, about trifles as about serious 
things. She clung to ‘‘ first principles.” It was a first principle 
with her never to enter a casino, English or French, and Rex 
Basire vainly expended his best special pleading in seeking to 
change her. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot objected, perhaps, to waltz with a one-armed 
man ? Would she give him a polka, then ? Would she “ rush ” 
an American quadrille ? It made it ever so much more diverting 
if one did not know the figures of an American. Well, if she 
would not dance at all, would she take his arm and walk round 
the rooms ? “ Simply to put them in their place, Mrs. Arbuthnot. 

I have my British vanity. I want these bragging Frenchmen, 
accustomed to nothing handsomer than lay-figures out of the 
pattern books, to see ?/ow.” 

All in vain. Dinah wished neither to dance nor to dazzle. 
Only, if Lord Rex pleased — thus, after a space, she admonished 
him — it would be wise for his lordship to join the rest of his 


214 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


party. Miss Yerschoyle was standing out ; there could not be a 
likelier time than the present for him to secure Miss Verschoyle's 
hand. 

His lordship, however, did not please. And so, when Gaston 
and Linda Thorne returned later on from their walk, the first fact 
patent to both on entering the ballroom was Dinah's absence. 
With a quick look around, Linda discerned llosie Verschoyle 
standing at her mother’s side, partnerless. 

Kosie Yerschoyle a wallflower ? Oh, this is too bad ! What 
can Lord Rex be thinking off ? ” exclaimed Linda ingenuously. 

Mr. Arbutlinot, I insist upon your asking poor little Rosie to 
dancG at once.” 

“ I thought that j^ou and I were to take pity on each other, Mrs. 
Thorne, for auld lang syne ?” 

Think of Rosie, not me. It is positively wicked for old 
married women to monopolise the dancing men while girls stand 
out.” 

Are you sure Miss Yerschoyle would care to liave a man with 
deposited affections for her partner? a veteran whose waltz step 
dates from the reign of Louis Philippe ? ” 

“ Try her. In my young days girls would sooner dance with 
anybody than remain partnerless.” 

‘‘ That ‘ anybody ’ gives me confidence. Jt is good to know the 
exact compartment in which one is pigeonholed.” 

Gaston crossed the room. He made his bow before Rosie, who 
moved forward graciously. Now that Mr. Arbutlinot had asked 
her, said the girl, in her thin staccato, she would have the enjoy- 
ment of one really good waltz. Something in Gaston’s looks 
made her certain that he was a splendid dancer. Louis Philippe ? 
Mr. Arbuthnot’s step dated from the days of Louis Philippe ? 
“ Why that,” cried Rosie, “ was before we were all born !” She 
confessed to never remembering about those “ horrid French 
Revolution people,” but had a notion Louis Philippe came next to 
the king who got liis head cut off. Or was he Egalite, the man 
who insisted upon dying in his boots ? 

“ Louis Philippe came next to the king who got his head cut 
off,” said Gaston, as his arm clasped her well-rounded waist. ‘‘I 
liad no idea. Miss Yerschoyle, that you were such a profound 
historian.” 

Linda Thorne took the chair left vacant beside Rosie’s mother* 


FOR AULD LANG SYNE. 


215 


‘‘ Your dear child is looking her best, Mrs. Yerschoyle. I think 
our Guernsey roses do us national credit. We ought to produce 
an effect upon the foreign mind.” 

“ The young people are too much flushed, every one of them. 
A day like this may lay the seeds of life-long malady. I know, as 
a fact, Mrs. Thorne, that Rosie is dancing in wet shoes.” 

“ Better dance than sit still in them,” remarked Linda cheer- 
fully. ‘‘You never catch cold while you are amused.” 

‘‘ Could we not have been amused at a quarter the cost ? I 
have been trying in my own mind to reckon up the expenses of 
the expedition. Putting everything at the lowest, I bring it to 
something fabulous — fabulous ! I these young subalterns, sons, 
no doubt, of needy men, had only given us a tea-drinking on 
L’Ancresse Common ! When Colonel Verschoyle was in com- 
mand — — ” 

The time when her colonel commanded a regiment in Guernsey 
was Mrs. Verschoyle’s one uncheckered recollection, the standard 
by which all subsequent mortal events must be judged! 

“ When poor Colonel Verschoyle was in command, that is what 
the officers used to do. Give us a tea-drinking at L’Ancresse and 
a dance for the young people afterward. No show. Very little 
expense. Everybody pleased. Then of course, if you got your 
shoes wet you could change them.” 

The advantages of L’Ancresse over Langrune as a spot whereat 
to change your shoes seemed to touch Mrs. Verschoyle nearly. 
Her eyes filled. 

“ The money that has gone on all this,” she mourned; “not to 
speak of the doctors’ bills we may have to pay hereafter! When 
first the plan was chalked out I foresaw how everything would 
end. I entreated Rosie to reason with Lord Rex. Unfortunately 
I can never get my children to listen to me.” 

“ You should have gained over Mrs. Arbuthnot,” said Linda 
with a spice of malice. “As the picnic was got up for her, no 
doubt she could have amended the programme.” 

Mrs. Verschoyle looked more like a little bewildered white 
mouse than usual, as this newly propounded idea made its way 
slowly to her intelligence. 

A most unprecedented thing ! To get up a party of pleasure for 
a married lady without daughters! Mrs. Arbuthnot, I believe, 
has no daughters ? — at all events not of an age to be introduced. 
Well, she is a very sweet-looking young woman,” said the meek, 


216 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


motherly soul, through whose lips no breath of scandal ever passed. 
“ Mrs. Arbuthnot has just that fair, placid, large look that used to 
be so much admired in my Flo. But the complexion is too trans- 
parent’ for health. Did I tell you Flo’s husband was ordered to 
Malta ? His regiment is on this season’s reliefs, and Flo talks of 
coming over to me with the children — four babies, and a native 
nurse. I suppose I shall be able to take them all in ? ” 

‘‘ Easily. You have only to give up your own room and sleep in 
the conservatory. When Eahnee is married and offers to come 
home, with four babies and a native nurse, sleeping in the con- 
servatory,” observed Linda, ‘‘is just the kind of sacrifice I shall 
be prepared to make.” 

“ You would have the old jungle ague back upon you in twenty- 
four hours if you did. Neither you nor Doctor Thorne are people 
who should take liberties with themselves. Indeed, I think you 
have both been looking sadly this spring. Rosie, my dear, come 
here.” For the waltz had ended. Gaston Arbuthnot was walk- 
ing past, English fashion, his partner on his arm. “ Come and 
sit down by me, out of the draught. I do hope this is the last 
dance we shall stay for, Mr. Arbuthnot ? ” 

“ No, indeed, mamma. We are to stay for the next. It is 
another waltz, and I am engaged for it to Lord Rex,” Rosie 
glanced, a little ruefully, tow^ard the door where Dinah and Lord 
Rex still stood. “ Thank you so much, Mr. Arbuthnot, for our 
beautiful waltz. I hope,” said Rosie Yerscboyle, ‘‘ all my partners, 
as long as I live, will have taken dancing lessons in the reign of 
Louis Philippe.” 

When the opening bars of the waltz sounded. Lord Rex, with 
no very great alacrity, came across the room to claim Rosie’s hand. 
Gaston Arbuthnot bent over Linda. 

“ ‘ For auld lang syne.’ Is this to be our dance, Mrs. Thorne ? ” 
Linda Thorne was not a pretty, not by natural gift a graceful 
woman. She was a perfect dancer. Poor Dinah, from her hiding- 
place, had found a genuine pleasure in watching Gaston waltz 
with dimpled, smiling, Rosie Yerscboyle. For Dinah, like all 
wholesome-minded mortals, had unmixed sympathy with the 
spirits and enjoyment of light-hearted girlhood. She looked with 
very different perceptions at Linda Thorne, looked at her with 
something of the feeling a true but unpopular artist might know 
on watching the facile successes of meretricious talent. This 


FOR AULD LANG SYNE. 


217 


tinseled, pleasure-loving Linda, with her clinging draperies, her 
Indian perfumes — this wife whose heart was not with her husband, 
this mother who contentedly could leave her child to servants — 
was so far below the ideal toward which, since her marriage, 
Dinah Arbuthnot had faithfully striven. 

Below an ideal standard. And yet, in such vital points as 
talking amusing, in dancing, dressing, dinner-giving, in the ail- 
important matter of pleasing men difficult to please like Gaston 
Arbuthnot, how immeasurably was Linda her superior I Dinah’s 
heart contracted. She was just going to shift away into deeper 
shadow, when a hand touched her arm with friendly purpose. 
Turning, she saw Marjorie Bartrand, — Cassandra Tighe, laden 
with nets and specimen boxes, in the rear. 

Marjorie’s face glowed damask. A pity you were not with us, 
Mrs. Arbuthnot. We have just had a glorious time, moth-hunting 
in the Luc dunes, Miss Tighe and I, and — and — every now and then 
Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot condescended to join when the chase got 
warm. What are you all about here ? ” Marjorie ascended a step, 
she took a smiting glance round the ballroom. “ Well, this is as 
good as a sermon. Miss Tighe, come in and be edified. Is it not 
fine to see middle-aged couples waltzing for the public good ? ” 

With a little scornful gesture of the head Marjorie indicated 
Gaston and his partner. 

Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot may be doing his steps from personal 
motives, perhaps because he has the ‘ artistic temperament,’ 
whatever,” said Marjorie, “ that elastic term may mean. Nothing 
but severe principles, the determination to point a moral, could 
make Linda Thorne go through violent exercise on a night like 
this.” 

Linda Thorne is considered the best waltzer in Guernsey,” 
said Cassandra. Your tongue is over sharp. You speak before 
you think, Marjorie Bartrand.” 

“ I feel before I do either,” whispered the girl, her hand stealing 
back, with half-sby kindness, to Dinah’s arm. 

‘‘If Mrs. Arbuthnot had been with us,” said Cassandra, “she 
would have witnessed a sight worth laughing at. Marjorie scoffs 
at middle aged partners. What would you think, Mrs. Arbuthnot, 
of a white-haired woman flying across hedges and ditches — breath- 
less with excitement, over the capture of a butterfly ? Scarce a 
dozen specimens of Pontia Daplidice have been seen in Northern 


218 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


Europe during the last twenty years,” went on old Cassandra, 
flushed still with victory. ‘‘ And of these, six, only, were netted, 
like mine, on the wing. Why, it would be worth staying a week 
here— a week, a month, on the outside chance of sighting a second 
Pontia Daplidice I ” 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


MISSING. 

All this time the Princess^ lying well outside the Luc rocks, 
was getting up her steam. Before the waltz had ended a red light, 
liung from the vessel’s bows, gave the signal for those on shore to 
hurry their departure. There was a flutter of airy dresses as the 
English party emerged from the ballroom into darkness, a ripple 
of talk as they filed, Indian fashion, hand steadying hand, down 
the narrow path that led from the casino to the little fishing slip 
or jetty. 

And then unexpectedly came the first misadventure that had 
arisen to mar this day of calm and sunshine. When the party 
had embarked in two of the unwieldy flat-bottomed boats of the 
country^ it occurred to Lord Rex, as commander-in-chief, that 
their number should be counted. And soon the cry arose that one 
was wanting! Seventeen human souls left Guernsey that morning 
— on this point all were confident. Sixteen human souls only were 
forthcoming now. And no efforts of memory, individual or col- 
lective, could hit upon the defaulter’s name. 

Mrs. Yerschoyle exclaimed, in a hollow voice, that it was a most 
uncomfortable omen. She would be sorry to depress the younger 
people’s spirits, but, for her part, she would sooner set sail in the 
teeth of a hurricane than have had this thing occur. “ Let the 
counting be more systematic,” said the poor lady, jumping to her 
feet, and for once in her life launching into independent action. 
“ Let me repeat each name slowly, beginning with the youngest 
of the gentlemen, and let each person answer as he is called. Mr. 
Smith? Brown? Jones? Lord Rex? The two Mr. Arbuthnots ? 
Doctor Thorne ? ” 

After Doctor Thorne’s name there was a moment’s silence- 
Then Linda, tragic of accent, ejaculated, “ Robbie ! Of course!” 
And then, I regret to say, most of the younger people began to 
laugh. “ But it may be a matter of life and death,” cried Mrs. 


220 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


Thorne. ‘‘ If you please, Lord Rex, I will go on shore at once. 
The Princess may start, probably will start, without me. My 
duty is to look for Robbie. Oh, I am most uneasy! It is all my 
selfishness. Robbie ought never to have been brought on such an 
expedition. I am certain something has happened to him! I 
shall never forgive myself while I live.” 

These amiable anxieties were the exact sentiments suited to the 
occasion. Mrs. Thorne expressed them with agitated dignity, 
and, of course, no one laughed again. Consolations, even, were 
forthcoming. Doctor Thorne had been seen, in the flesh, outside 
Luc Casino; or, if not the Doctor, some old gentleman exactly 
like him, with a puggaree, sand-shoes, a wdiite umbrella, and 
smoking an enormous cigar, just like the cigar poor dear Doctor 
Thorne always used to smoke. It was the prettiest, least wise of 
the de Carteret sisters who offered this bit of evidence. The gen- 
tleman w^as observed to look in for aw'hile at the dancing, and 
then to walk away, in the direction, Ada de Carteret believed, of 
the sea. 

“ The sea! And who can tell that the sea has not surrounded 
him! In out-of-the-w'ay French places the tide always swells up 
with a circuit.” Tears were in Linda’s voice as she proclaimed 
this maritime fact. “1 am most uneasy.” She adjusted her 
Indian shawl w ith grace round her shoulders, then skipped lightly 
to land. “Robbie ought never to have been brought — it was all 
my selfishness — I am torn in pieces by remorse.” 

The young ladies, wdth the exception of one flint soul, cried, 
“ No, no,” in chorus. Mrs. Thorne positively must not say these 
dreadful things, wdien every one knew she had such a character 
for unselfishness! Mrs. Yerschoyle felt for her smelling-salts, 
then settled herself gloomily down, prepared for the worst. Mrs, 
Yerschoyle felt within her the courage of a prophet whose owm 
dark sayings are on the eve of fulfilment. 

Gaston Arbuthnot in his quiet, unmoved manner, rose. Step- 
ping on shore, Gaston volunteered to go in search of the missing 
Doctor. 

These were just the scenes wdierein Linda so infinitely diverted 
him — Frenchman as he w^as in three-fourths of his nature — little 
scenes in which, on the boards of domestic life, she played such 
admirable farce without knowing it ! 

“I shall walk straight back to Langrune, Mrs. Thorne. Not- 
withstanding your tragic tone, in spite of Miss de Carteret’s 


MISSING. 


221 


evidence, I believe the Doctor has never missed any of and atu , s 
this moment is smoking his cigar, possibly sipping his ‘ little 
glass,’ at the Hotel Chateaubriand.” 

“ Unless you are here in a quarter of an hour, sharp, we shall 
leave you behind,” called out Lord Kex, when Gaston has pro- 
ceeded some paces on his errand. “ The steamer is chartered 
until to-morrow only. Whatever the rest of us do, the skipper 
will take care not to lose his tide. 

Linda Thorne, by this time in her agitation, and her Indian 
shawl, was at Gaston’s side. So the exordium might be taken as 
addressed to them both. 

All right,” answered Mr. Arbuthnot leisurely. ‘‘Langruneis 
not the end of the earth. If by the time we secure the Doctor? 
the captain has weiglied anchor, we must all get back to Guernsey’ 
via Cherbourg. That would fit in very well. The Lady of the 
Isles crosses the Cherl)ourg to-morrow,” went on Gaston, raising 
his voice as he looked back over his shoulder toward the boats. 
“We should just have time to visit the dockyard before start- 
ing.” 

And then the two figures sped onward, side by side. They were 
watched with keen speculative interest by the occupants of the 
boats. No one. save simple Mrs. Yerschoyle, felt disturbed as to 
the Doctor’s ultimate fate. Was an old gentleman who had taken 
admirable care of himself for forty years in India a likely subject 
to be spirited away on the sands, between Luc and Langrune ? 
But the situation had a dramatic piquancy that stirred even the 
unimaginative minds of the Mi'S de Carterets and their attendant 
subalterns. For there was Dinah! Impossible to forget that Mrs. 
Gaston Arbuthnot, that lowly-born young woman with the beau- 
tiful eyes, and set, sad mouth, was also watching the two figures 
as they disappeared in the darkness. 

“A quarter of an hour. By Jove! ten minutes of that quarter 
must be nearly gone.” 

And taking out his watch, I;ord Rex struck a vesuvian in order 
to learn the time It was exactly eight minutes to nine, and at 
nine, sharp, the Princess was to weigh her anchor. The moment 
for action had come. Now, wha was the wisest thing to do ? One 
point seemed certain — it was useless for both boats to wait longer. 
Let the smaller boat, at the head of the jetty, start for the steamer 
at once, let the captain be told what had happened, and ask to put 
off his departure as long as practicable. If Gaston Arbuthnot and 


222 


A Gin TON GIRL. 


the Thornes arrived in time, the second boat would bring tliein 
off. If not — why, common sense could really dictate no better 
plan than Gaston’s own. Langrune was not the end of the world. 
A railway to Cherbourg existed. The Lady of the Isles would no 
doubt bring the lost sheep comfortably back to their respective 
folds to-morrow. 

Din all as it happened was, with Ada de Carteret and the elder 
ladies, in the boat at the head of the jetty. And soon before 
Dinah’s eyes, as before the eyes of one who dreams, the reflections 
of the Casino lamps, the children’s Chinese lanterns, were dancing 
with fairy-like brightness across the moving water. She realized 
that her day of pleasure was over, that every one — yes, she could 
catch the voices of Marjorie and Geff, holding merry talk in the 
other boat — every one took the adventure jestingly, and that her 
heart felt like lead, that her hands were ice-cold, that each breath 
she drew was a conscious and painful effort. Well, if she had 
enough bodily strength to act her part out, she thought, say no 
word to betray her plebeian emotions and so bring down ridicule 
on her husband or herself, she must be content! Once on board 
the steamer she could hide herself in the cabin, away from sight, 
and there wait, until the comedy (or tragedy) had reached its next 
act. This one wretched comfort remained to her. She would be 
able to screen herself, for a while at least, from observation — to be 
alone ! 

But a new and still more diverting incident was about to be woven 
into the text of the play. 

If I were not in such a nervous state,” cried Mrs. Verschoyle^ 
when the boat was within three or four lengths of the Princess, 
“ if I were not so morally shaken that I distrusted my own senses, 
I should say our good Doctor was on board. There came a flash 
of light just now beside the wheel, the lighting, perhaps, of a 
fusee, and for a second it seemed to me that I saw Doctor Thorne’s 
figure distinctly. A pity some reliable person was not looking ! ” 

And Mrs. Yerschoyle, to her own surprise, had seen correctly. 
The Doctor it proved to be — the Doctor smoking one of the ship’s 
best cheroots, and enjoying the summer night with unruffled in- 
nocence. He advanced gallantly, to assist the ladies in their em- 
barcation, and heard with gusto the story of his own supposed 
fate. Surrounded by the tide? Tut tut! Linda might have 
known, had she exercised her reason, whither he had betaken him. 
self. ‘‘ Only you ladies never do reason,” said the Doctor, ad- 


MISSING. 


223 


dressing Mrs. Yerscboyle. “It was growing damp on shore — 
and let me give you a bit of advice, my dear madam: whenever 
you feel that clinging kind of chill, after gun-fire, get on board 
ship, if you have the chance. Get an honest plank, instead of the 
abominable miasmal emanations of Mother Earth, under your feet. 
Yes, yes,’* went on the Doctor comfortably, “I hailed one of the 
Princess’s boats and came on board, two hours ago, have drunk 
my cup of coffee, and beaten Ozanne at his own game, eribbage.” 

“ And your wife’s anxiety ? ” 

“ My dear Mrs. Verschoyle, I am penitent! Only my wife, you 
see, might have reasoned. It would have deprived you all, no 
doubt, of a harmless excitement; but Linda, I think, might have 
reasoned. Any way, it is better to be drowned by one’s friends’ 
imaginations than run the risk, in earnest, of a pair of damp 
shoes.” 

To this Mrs. Verschoyle gave a qualified assent. The mention 
of damp shoes affected her. Still, she was not a little shocked at 
Doctor Thorne’s levity — “At his advanced age,” thought poor 
Mrs. Verschoyle, perturbedly, “ and after the awful narrowness 
of his escape 1” 

“The fear is. Doctor, that Mrs. Thorne will be left behind,” 
cried Ada de Carteret, with meaning. “ At the first word of 
danger Linda started off along the Langruue road to look for 
you. 

“ Linda ought to have reasoned.” 

“ And Lord Kex declares the captain must weigh anchor at 
nine sharp! It is like a scene in a novel — the last scene but one, 
with everything in a delicious tangle still. Why, Doctor, you are 
the hero of the day ! ” 

“ I feel enormously flattered,” said the old Doctor. “ It is a 
very long time since a charming young lady has said anything so 
pretty to me.” 

“But your wife. Doctor Thorne!” expostulated Cassandra 
Tighe, who with her nets and cases had been the last to leave the 
boat. “ Do you realize that if Ozanne sa'^^es his tide — if we return 
to Guernsey to-night — Mrs. Thorne will remain in France ?” 

“ I cannot believe it. Ozanne would not surely be so ungallant. 
(Allow me, Miss Tighe, to help you with a few of your packages.) 
No, no. The skipper would not be so ungallant. And then my 
dear Linda is the most famous traveler ! Surely I have told you 
what wonderful presence of mind she showed once in the Nilgiri 


224 


A GIBTON GIBL, 


Hills ? Lost, actually lost, for four entire days! If, by mischance, 
Linda should be left alone, she will make her way home to-mor- 
row, via Cherbourg,. and enjoy the adventure/’ 

“ And Mrs. Thorne is not alone,” cried Ada de Carteret, clap, 
ping her hands, and no doubt feeling that the position grew more 
and more deliciously tangled. “ Mr. Arbuthnot is with her — not 
Marjorie Bartrand’s coach, but the other one: the singing, flirting, 
good-looking Mr. Arbuthnot,” added this vivacious young lady, 
profoundly forgetful that the good-looking Mr. Arbuthnot’s wife 
stood within three yards of her elbow. 

“ Then my fears are set at rest,” observed the Doctor genially. 
“ If my friend Arbuthnot is there my fears are set thoroughly at 
rest. Meanwhile, I may as well speak to the skipper. The tide, 
of course, must be saved. Still, it would be only right to let 
Ozanne know how affairs stand.” 

And Dinah had listened to it all — youthful jest, aged philosophy, 
all! And standing among the others, with a queer sensation that 
she had suddenly oldened by a dozen years, some pallid ghost of 
a smile rose to her lips. Here was a grand opportunity, verily, 
of learning a lesson at first hand, a chance in a thousand for read- 
justing her standard, for observing the nicer little shades of feel- 
ing and usage which prevail in the world to w^hich she would fain 
belong. 

A smile, I say, rose to Dinah’s lips. Which of us does not 
remember how, in sharp mental stress, he has found himself look- 
ing on at the trivial accessories of his pain, as a stranger might, 
derisively ! In the poor girl’s heart was death. 

She knew that for Gaston to have set at naught her pleadings, 
for Gaston to have quitted her thus, might render to-night a bitter 
crisis in the lives of both. 


CHAPTER XXX. 


LINDA WARMS TO HER PART. 

But Dinah was not unobserved, not uncared for. 

If' Cassandra Tiglie’s taste for piquant situation once in a hun- 
dred times led her astray, the ninety-nine good offices performed 
by the kindly old maid in the interval were sufficient, surely, to 
atone for the single blunder. 

Cassandra’s heart went out tow^ards Dinah at the first moment 
when the fair sad face passed before her in the garden of Miller’s 
Hotel. She had listened with regret to stories of Gaston’s fickle- 
ness-even while her talents as a narrator assisted in giving such 
stories Avider currency — had felt remorse, sharp and hard, for her 
own unwitting share in the ‘‘ Arbuthnot drama.” At this hour of 
which I w'rite, Dinah standing mute, wan, beside her, Cassandra’s 
breast kindled with renewed compassion towards the simple un- 
befriended country girl, a compassion none the less genuine in 
that it went somewhat wide of Dinah’s actual trouble. 

‘‘ You look thoroughly done up, my dear Mrs. Arbuthnot. I 
am afraid to-day’s gadding about has been too much for you. Let 
us see,” said Cassandra, in a Avhisper, “ if we cannot find some 
quiet corner, you and I, where we may settle down and rest.” 

Dinah turned on her a look of blank, unanswering pain. She 
Avanted neither sympathy nor support, wanted only to creep below, 
out of sight, to avoid all temptation to disobedience, all possibility 
of bringing doAvn ridicule — on Gaston ! 

‘‘ I feel chilled — nothing, that is, to speak of ; you are tery 
good, Miss Tighe, but I had rather go doAvn to the saloon alone, 
please. I am used to being alone, and — and I have a cloak AAdiich 
I must look for.” 

A note of suppressed passion was in her voice. It betrayed 
emotion curiously at variance Avith the commonplace words, the 


226 


•A GIRTON GIRL. 


staid reserved manner. And, in a moment, Cassandra Tighe’s 
valorous spirit had armed itself for action. 

“ Doctor Thorne, will you stop that Luc boat if you please? 
Nover mind my nets, they can go anywhere. Attendez, matelots! 
Attendez moi,” cried Cassandra in her own peculiar French, and 
signaling with her handkerchief to the boat, already a few lengths 
distant from the steamer. ‘‘ It would scarcely do, Doctor, to let 
matters shape themselves with such very slight rough-hewing ! 
Some one must go ashore without delay. Think of Linda’s 
anxiety if the Princess should leave before she had been assured 
of your safety!” 

‘‘ I think of many things,” said Doctor Thorne, with humor, 
“ the dampness of the night pre-eminently. Of course, I must 
go. Still, Linda might have exercised her reason, such reason as 
Providence bestows on the sex. Linda is not a child. What 
possible good could come from this kind of wild-goose chase ? ” 

And the old Doctor moved an inch or two, exceedingly crusty 
of mien, in the direction of the companion-ladder. 

You will just stay comfortably whei'e you are ; you will keep 
a dry plank under your feet, Doctor Thorne, and give me carte 
blanche to look after your wife. If the Princess starts without 
us, Linda and I must find our way back to Guernsey. I have a 
purse in my pocket, Linda has a brain in her head. We both 
know how to travel. To you, Mrs. Arbuthnot, I confide my 
treasure.” Turning round she gave Dinah a little chip box, 
clasping the girl’s cold hands for an instant as she did so. “ Take 
care of Pontia Baplidice, my dear, and take care of yourself. 
Look for your cloak by all means. Doctor Thorne, do you per- 
suade Ozanne to give us every possible moments’ law. I have a 
presentiment that all will come right, that your good wife’s over 
anxiety will not lead her into mischief.” 

The unwieldy Luc boat was by this time swaying to and fro at 
the bottom of the ladder. A Luc fisherman stood, with bare 
brawny arms extended, for Cassandra’s reception. A few seconds 
later Cassandra and boat, alike, had become a dark spot on the 
water, luminous now with the quick-moving facets of the rising 
tide. Dinah was alone, indeed ! 

She stood, for a time, mechanically watching the row of lights 
on shore, mechanically listening to the steam as it puffed, with 
energy unmistakeable, from the funnels of the Princess. Then, 
uncertain of tread, heavy of limb as of heart, she groped her way 


LINDA WARMS TO HER PART. 227 

below, resolved,^ silently, to endure whatever fate the coining half- 
hour may have in store for her. 

The cabin lanijis were as yet unlighted Dinah entered the 
ladies’ saloon, at hazard. She sank down on the couch nearest 
the door. Then, burying her face between her hands, she strove, 
with might, to collect her thoughts, 'to stifle the resentment 
against Gaston which conscience, sternly just, already condemned 
as paltry — ungenerous. 

It was of her own perverse will that she accepted Rex Basire’s 
invitation. How often had Gaston warned her that, with her 
temper, her opinions, she would find ‘‘society” a dangerous 
experiment ; a game in which she would be likely to stake gold 
against other players’ counters ! She had come here to-day to 
please herself. She had no right of control over her husband’s 
actions. Gaston lived according to the light of his own con- 
science, not hers. He was courteous by temperament, fond of 
little unforeseen deviations from any laid-down programme, 
prompt, always, in putting his time, his energy, himself, at the 
service of his friends. 

“Langrune is not the end of the earth.” She recalled his 
cheery, amused tone, as he was vanishing with Linda across the 
dunes. “If the Princess should start without us, we must get 
back by Cherburg to-morrow. It will fit in very well.” She 
remembered Doctor Thorne — his self-possession, his confidence in 
Gaston. “If my friend Arbuthnot is there, one’s fears are set at 
rest.” She could imagine Linda’s witty reproduction of the whole 
too delicious accident when they should get back to Guernsey. 
Oh, let her gain mastery over herself — mastery! Let to-day’s 
lesson be a deeper one than can be gained by nice observance of 
tone, or look, or manner. Let her have learned to conquer small 
jealousies, to be w^ary of quick judgments, to construe the actions, 
the intentions of others, nobly. 

Dinah resolved in the spirit to be strong. Meanwhile, she 
realized, with growing certitude, that she was weak, exceedingly, 
ill the flesh. Her breath came with greater effort, her hands 
grew colder and more clammy. Rising with difiiculty, she set 
herself to search for her cloak among a pyramid of wraps that 
lay, disordered, on a neighboring couch, dimly discernible by aid 
of a newiy-lighted lamp from the main cabin. Dinah Arbuthnot’s 
cloak lay (can Fate not be ironical even in the disposition of a 
heap of shawis ?) immediately above a soft, long Indian scarf 


228 


A GIETON GIRL. 


belonging to Mrs. Thorne. As she lifted it the subtle Eastern 
perfume associated always with Linda’s presence, seemed to 
Dinah, in a second, to fill the cabin. A feeling of sickness, a 
sudden access of keen personal repulsion, took hold of her — all 
powerful hold ; for, this time, it was instinct, not reason, that 
moved her anger. She flung down her cloak, with a childish 
sense of disgust at having handled it. She sank back, passively, 
upon the sofa . . . 

A few minutes later came in the steward to light the centre 
1 imp. Seeing one of the guests alone, and deathly white, he took 
the common sense, or steward’s view of the situation. Feeling 
queer, already ? Let him get the lady a brandy-and-soda, a glass 
of wine, then ? Settle the system before they got into rough 
water — though, for the matter of that, they would have a splendid 
passage Sea like a mill pond, tide favorable. Nothing but run- 
ning into one of these here Channel fogs to be feared. 

“ I will take some soda-water, if you please.” Odd and far 
away Dinah’s voice sounded to herself. am a good sailor in 
general. I would rather have a rough sea than a smooth one. 
But this evening I am a little tired. I feel thirsty.” 

She drank the soda-water with a sense of refreshment. ‘‘ The 
wretchedest preparation, without the B., that could be made for a 
voyage,” thought the steward, as he stood, salver in hand, waiting 
for her glass. Then, when the man had again left her alone, she 
crept back into her place, held her hands tight to her throat to 
relieve the cruel sensation that well-nigh choked her, and waited. 

Waited — how long she knew not — perhaps, a short ten minutes 
only. In recalling the whole scene, later — the swell of the rising 
water, the murmur of voices in the adjacent cabin, the clinging, 
overpowering Indian perfume — in summing up, I say, each exter- 
nal detail of that miserable evening, it would afterwards seem to 
Dinah Arbuthnot that no year of her life ever took so much hard 
living through as those mortal minutes. 

At length they came to an end. Doubt was to be set at rest, or 
turned into yet sharper certainty. For she could tell, first by the 
muffled thud of rowlocks, then by the splash of oar blades in the 
water, that the second boat was arriving. She could distinguish 
Geoffrey’s voice. Lord Rex Basire’s, old Doctor Thorne’s — very 
loud this last, and didactic, but yielding Dinah’s heart no consola- 
tion. Would not Doctor Thorne talk loud and didactically whether 
■his Linda had returned from her quest of him or not ? 


LINDA WABMS TO HER FART. 


229 


After a time, the voices began to disperse. There came the 
measured yoy-a-hoy of the sailors, the shuffle of feet, the fall of 
cable oil deck. Then Dinah heard the steward saying to one of 
the boys that they had weighed anchor. And not a moment too 
soon. With the air so thick, and the glass nohow, the skippei 
ought to have started, on this badly buoyed coast, a couple of 
hours ago. A French pilot may be all very well, but to his, the 
steward’s mind, English daylight was better. 

Dinah knelt upon a sofa, inclined her face to the cool air of an 
open porthole, and watched the receding French coast. There 
lay the villages of Luc and Langrune, a line of lights flickering, 
misty and irregular, above the shimmer of the sea. Far away in 
the distance, rose one larger light, the signal lantern in the 
tower of La Delivrande. Dinah watched, automatically. She 
noted scarcely more than a playgoer, carried away by excitement, 
notes the scene-painting, at the most thrilling situation of a 
drama. To her, as to a child, the whole world was concentrated 
under the passion that governed herself. Had Gaston come 
back ? She longed to know this with a longing which one must 
call to mind her narrow past life, her more than girlish simplicity, 
rightly to understand. And still, she did not attempt to leave 
the cabin. Her strength, moral and physical, seemed paralyzed. 
How should she make her way, alone, up on deck, search in the 
darkness for Gaston, ask questions, parry, with a jest, such airy 
explanation of her husband’s disappearance as might, on all sides, 
be offered her ? 

A voice, close at her elbow, made her start, guiltily. 

^‘No one in the ladies’ saloon? Well, then, Mrs. Gaston 
Arbuthnot must have tumbled overboard. Her husband and I 
have vainly searched the Princess for her.” Oh, kindly, Cas- 
sandra! Was no small bit of embroidery tacked on, just at this 
juncture, over the bare truth? “So much for trusting valuable 
entomological specimens out of one’s own hands 

“ Miss Tighe, I am here. I have been trying to get a little 
warm. Your moth is safe,” stammered Dinah. 

She scarcely knew in what fashion the words left her dry and 
trembling lips. 

“Moth? A country-bred girl like you not to know that a 
speckled white, although, by luck, we caught him out of hours, 
is a butterfly ! Well I have brought back our other pair of but- 
terflies. safe and sound.” Before saying this Cassandra had put 


230 


A GIBTON GIEL. 


on her spectacles and carried her box beneath the doorway lamp. 
She made a great show of examining its contents critically, thus 
allowing Dinah to recover her self-possession, unnoticed. “ From 
certain murinurings I overheard among the sailors I believe, we 
all three, narrowly escaped being abandoned to our fate.” 

‘‘ Mrs. Thorne had begun to think that her husband was on 
board.” 

Dinah’s constrained tone was one of doubt rather than inquiry. 

“ My dear, nobody ever knows what Mrs. Thorne thinks. Linda 
is a charming woman, the pleasantest companion, when she 
chooses, in the world. But, as the Doctor says, Linda might 
reason. These electric transitions, from gay to grave, and back 
to gay again, are embarrassing in a world where the rest of us 
walk by rule. Linda Thorne is all impulse.” 

“Ah!” 

“ At the first word of the Doctor’s disappearance, to run off, 
helter skelter, like a schoolgirl . . . yes, Linda Thorne,” cried 

Cassandra, peering round at some person or persons across her 
shoulder, “I am talking of you. Come down and hear all the 
wicked things I have to say. At the first word of the Doctor’s 
disappearance to run otf like a school girl, taking somebody else’s 
husband with her! It was atrocious! Who is that behind you, 
Linda*? Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Tell Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, 
from me, that everything worth looking after on board the Prin^ 
cess is found. ” 

As Cassandra Tighe scored her point, not without a little air of 
triumph, Linda tripped gayly down into the cabin. 

“We are to have the very finest weather. Miss Tighe, and all 
the world means to remain on deck. Only, of course, one wants 
shawls. What! Mrs. Arbuthnot ? " 

Pausing in her search among the heap of wraps, it would seem 
that Linda recognized Dinah’s presence with amiable surprise. 
But Dinah was coldly silent. 

“ Surely you, of all people, are not going to become a cabin 
passenger? My dear creature I have just escaped the quaintest 
little adventure in the world! But for Miss Tighe’s advent, I 
should have eloped, yes, run clean, straight away, with your hus- 
band: We were planning it all out, from a commercial stand- 
point, as we flew frantically, along the sand hills after Robbie. 
Were we not, Miss Tighe ? ” 

“ I leave these matters to your own conscience,” was the dry 


LINDA WARMS TO HER PART. 


231 


answer. Possibly, Cassandra recollected that the butterflies were 
not flying very frantically at the moment when she captured 
them at the starlit dunes. If you had run away with Mrs. 
Arbuthnot’s husband, I should have taken good care to run with 
you. I warned the iloctor of my intentions before I left the 
Princess. 

“ It was quite too unselfish, Miss Tighe, and pecuniarily, most 
apropos. I possessed five sous in copper {Guernsey currency); 
Mr. Arbuthnot was worth something under twenty francs. We 
should have had to leave our watches at the Mont de Piete — for 
me alas! no novel experience — the moment we reached Cherburg. 
Things have turned out, under Providence, for the best. Only, I 
think, I think , admitted Linda, with arch frankness, “the 
Doctor rather regrets haviiig to retire into insignificance. If I 
had not come back, Robbie would have remained the hero of the 
situation.” 

Mrs. Thorne ran through all this in her accustomed little tired, 
inconsequential way of talking, winding up, finally, with a long 
and earnest yawn. She then danced up to a strip of mirror at 
the best lighted end of the cabin and settled herself to the con- 
templation of her own image with interest. She dabbed her 
cheeks first with rice powder, then with eau-de-cologne, then with 
powder again, producing these cosmetics without a show of 
disguise from a tiny gilt case that hung at her waist-belt. She 
arranged the folds of her cachemire scarf above her sleek head in 
a certain Gitana mode, wbkh, like all good art, gave an idea 
of unpremeditation and became her mightily, she pinned a knot 
of feathery grass, a memento doubtless of the starlit dunes, in her 
breast. 

Easy to predict that Linda Thorne would not be sea-sick to- 
niglit! She was warming to the situation, intended to work up 
her part — everything in human life was a part,” to Linda Thorne 
— with spirit. 

“ Come up on deck, Miss Arbuthnot, will you not ? Surely 
with your splendid sea-going qualities, you are not going to stop 
down in this Black Hole of Calcutta ? ” 

“ Mrs. Arbuthnot will come up when I do,” cried Cassandra, 
who, with an added pair of spectacles on her nose, was pinning 
out insects under a lamp. “ Go your ways, Linda Thorne, wise 
ones if you can, and leave Mrs. Arbuthnot and me to follow ours.'’ 

“ I would not be wise if I might,” said Linda, giving an ex- 


232 


A GIliTON GIRL. 


pressive backward glance across her slioiilder. If I were wise . • 

I should see myself as other people see me.” 

And having uttered this, the acutest speech that ever left her 
lips, away floated Mrs. Thorne, with her powdered cheeks, her 
cachemii'es, and her Indian fragrance, from the cabin. 

Dinah could hear the languid accents, the little stage laugh 
(learnt from the stalls), for a good many seconds later. She could 
distinguish the voices, too, of Gaston, and of Rosie Yerschoyle. 
How heart-whole they all seemed! How frequent was their 
laughter! What a light time the past hours had been to every 
one of the party but herself! Gaston’s philosophy, thought 
Dinah, taking an unconscious downward step, might be the true 
one after all, then. Live while we live. What had she profited 
by a strain of feeling too tall for the occasion, by the tiptoe atti- 
tude, by throwing away gold where a more reasonable member of 
society would have quietly staked counters ? 

‘‘Any admittance here?” exclaimed a masculine voice, as 
an impatient hand pushed back the cabin door. “ Why, Mrs. 
Arbuthnot, I have been searching for you everywhere. I want 
you to come up on deck at once, please, and see a comet. Xot a 
comet really, you know,” Lord Rex went on, lookii)g hard at 
Dinah’s white face. “ Some kind of Japanese fire balloon sent up 
by the French people. Howevei*, it does just as well as one.” 

“ Yes, my dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, go,” cried old Cassandra, 
glancing up, over her double spectacles, from her pinning. “ It 
will take me an hour’s work to bring all my specimens straight. 
And your color shows you want oxygen. You are right. Lord 
Rex. Take Mrs. Arbuthnot on deck to see this comet which is 
not a comet. I shall follow by and-by.” 

And Dinah Arbuthnot obeyed. She did more. Dinah allowed 
the tips of her cold fingers to rest within Rex Basire’s hand as he 
pioneered her up the cabin stairs into the semi-darkness of the 
night. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


WIFE AND HUSBAND. 

The outlook continued promising overhead. The tide was at 
the right ebb for making Barfleur Point. At an earlier hour than 
had been hoped for, the friendly Casket lights showed, at intervals, 
above the starboard bow of the Princess. The skipper, cheerful 
of voice, promised his passengers that in forty minutes more — 
tide and weather remaining favorable — the vessel would be lying 
well to leeward of Alderney. 

All this time, Dinah had found no opportunity for exchanging 
a conciliatory word with her husband. She felt that Gaston did 
not so much avoid as ignore her. He always contrived to be 
deep in talk with some other person when his wife sought to 
draw near him, did not address her, did not recognize her 
presence. At length, abruptly, just as Dinah was nerving 
herself to make some desperate first advance, Mr. Arbuthnot 
crossed the deck. He came up to the spot where she and Rex 
Basire stood together. With the most natural air imaginable he 
put his hand under Dinah’s arm. 

“ Suppose you take a turn with me, wife ? ” Mr. Arbuthnot 
made the proposal in his pleasantest tone, Rex Basire listening. 
“ Do you see that revolving beacon ? Xo, my dear, no! Xeither 
aloft on the funnel, nor in my face, but away, far as you can look, 
to the right. That beacon marks the Casket Rocks. And there, 
straight ahead, but without any lights showing, as yet, we are to 
believe is Alderney, Let us make our way to the forecastle. Wo 
shall have a better view.’^ 

The forepart of the deck was deserted, save by two or three 
knots of sailors, talking low together in patois French as they 
watched the horizon. Gaston and Dinah were practically alone. 


234 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


She felt the heart within her throb uneasily. An icy politeness 
lay beneath the surface geniality of Gaston Arbuthnot’s manner. 
Dinah was prompt to recognize it. 

“ What a long day this has been, Gaston. I shall want no 
wider experience in respect of yachting picnics ” 

‘‘ You are changeable, Dinah. As we walked from Langrune 
to Luc, it was agreed between us that the day should be considered 
a success.” 

‘•A great deal has happened since then,” exclaimed Dinah* 
under her breath. 

Nothing very notably, surely. If I recollect right, I did my 
duty to the extent of two waltzes in the Luc ballroom, and you, 
my dear child, had a long, a most amusing and intellectual con- 
versation, I cannot doubt, with Lord Kex Basire, in one of the 
doorways.” 

Lord Kex Basire is never amusing when he talks to me.” 

Then I congratulate you on your proficiency in seeming 
amused. It ranks high as a difficult social art, even among 
veterans.” 

“ Gaston ! ” she exclaimed, a new and poignant doubt making 
itself felt. 

“ Dinah.” 

I don’t know what to think of your tone. Why have you 
never said a word, never looked at me during all these hours? 
Are you offended ? ” 

“ On the contrary,” retorted Gaston. They were now out of 
sight, out of earshot of everybody. As he spoke, Arbuthnot with- 
drew his hand from his wife’s arm. I am thoroughly your 
debtor. It was the sense of my indebtedness that made me 
bring you here. I wished to thank you without an audience, 
quietly.” 

“ To thank me,” stammered Dinah,, in a sort of breathless way. 

For — for ” she. broke off, reddening violently. 

Gaston watched her. For your solicitude, your kindly tact I 
That idea of dispatching the old lady in the scarlet cloak to 
chaperon me was boldly original, a fine intuition of wifely 
vigilance ” 

‘‘Gaston ! I never ” 

“Yet scarcely the sort of vigilance that passes current in a 
commonplace and scoffing world. If you had the smallest spark 
of humor, Dinah— that missing sense ! that one little flaw in your 


WIFE AND HUSBAND. 23a 

character ! — you would see things as the commonplace scoffing 
world sees them.” 

^‘Should I?” 

‘‘You would divine that, under no possible circumstances, — 
really it would be well to remember this for the rest of our mortal 
lives — under no circiimstances can I require an old lady, with or 
without a scarlet cloak, as my chaperon.” 

A different woman to Dinah might here have turned the tables 
on Gaston Arbuthnot, have stoutly, truthfully disavowed responsi- 
bility as to Cassandra Tighe’s movements. Dinah was too trans- 
parently honest to defend herself as to the letter, knowing that 
she had been an accessory in the spirit. 

“ When the time was so short — ten minutes more, Gaston, and 
the Princess would have started without you — I felt that my heart 
must stop. Miss Tighe, any one, could have seen on my face 
what I suffered.” 

“ I have no doubt that ‘any one’ could, and did see it,” said 
Gaston Arbuthnot, with grave displeasure. “ It would not occur 
to you to make an effort at decent self-control, whatever ridicule 
you might be bringing upon others. Does it never strike you, 
Dinah, he went on, unjustly, “ that other women have human 
sensibilities as well as yourself — Linda Thorne, for instance ? 
She rushed off, poor thing, in the greatest agitation at the first 
whisper of the Doctor’s disappearance, fearing nothing from Mrs. 
Grundy, fearing all things for her husband. Was it generous, 
charitable, do you think, to let your disapprobation be written, so 
that he who ran might read, upon your face ?” 

•“ I think,” said Dinah faithfully, that Mrs. Thorne felt no 
agitation whatsoever.” 

Gaston also thought so. It was a point he would not commit 
himself to argue out. 

“ There are feeling one must take ^r granted. Mrs. Thorne 
did the rigbt thing in refusing to start without her husband. I 
acted as I judged best in determining to remain by her. That 
ought to have been enough for you.” 

“ Yes. It ought to have been enough.” 

Dinah gazed before her .at the purplish streak faintly dividing 
the sea-line from the sky. It grew blurred and tremulous. Her 
eyes had filled with tears. 

“You had plenty of people to bear you con^p^py-^ Geoffrey, 
Miss Bertrand. It is unl?ecoming in you, Dinal^, tp ^ct li^e a 


236 


A GIB TON GIRL. 


wayward girl. However matters had turned out about Doctor 
and Mrs. Thorne, what hardship would there have been in your 
returning to Guernsey with Geoffrey and without me ? ” 

“None, none! I was wrong from first to last. All this is my 
lesson, remember. One cannot get a lesson by heart without a 
little trouble.” 

“ One might learn it without making everybody else absurd,” 
persisted Gaston. “You asked me why I had never addressed a 
word to you, never looked in your direction since we put out to 
sea. I will tell you why, my dear. I considered you dangerous. 
I was afraid.” 

Dinah lifted up her face. She fixed her truthful and trans- 
parent gaze full on Gaston Arbuthnot. 

“ I don’t understand you, Gaston. You know I never can un- 
derstand when you speak with a double meaning.” 

“ Well, there was a certain electric look about you, a look pro- 
phetic of lightning or thunder showers, for neither of which I am 
in the mood. You ought to have chosen a husband of more 
heroic mould, Dinah. There is the truth. A man, like the hero 
of a lady’s novel,” observed Mr. Arbuthnot, wittily, “ always 
equal to a strained altitude. A man, fond of the big primeval 
human passions — love, hatred, jealousy. But you have married 
me, and I am afraid you must take me as I am. You must also 
as often as you can — remember this, Dinah — as often as you can, 
endeavor not to render me ridiculous.” 

When Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot re-emerged out of the darkness, 
Gaston’s hand was resting on his Avife’s shoulder, Dinah’s face had 
recovered its calm. It would have taken a keen observer of coun- 
tenance to guess that a breeze so stiff as the one we know of had 
just stirred the surface of these two persons’ lives. Was Linda 
Thorne such an observer ? 

Linda was standing alone in the gangway, her attitude one 
of deliberation, when Gaston and his wife came aft. She kept her 
position, speaking to no one, until Lord Eex, companionless, like 
herself, had managed to find his way to Dinah’s elbow. Then Linda 
Thorne made a move. She crossed to the vessel’s side. Resting 
her hand on the bulwarks, she gazed heavenward. Such good 
lines as her throat and shoulders possessed were outlined, sharply, 
against the pallid back-ground of sky. 

Gaston Arbuthnot followed her before long. 

“ W^ are fortunate after all our misadventures, are we not? 


WIFE AND HUSBAND. 237 

The mate tells me that we have sighted Alderney. It seems likely 
that we shall get back to Petersport without fog.” 

And what, may I ask, do you mean by our misadventures 

There was a ring of suspicion in Linda Thorne’s tone. 

“Ah — what! The moment,” said Gaston, ‘‘when gleams of a 
scarlet cloak first flashed upon one along the sand-dunes seems to 
my own consciousness, about the most serious of them.” 

“You are singularly insincere, Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot! ” 

“ I cannot agree with you, Mrs. Thorne. My worst enemies, 
on the contrary, have the grace to credit me with a sort of brutal 
frankness.” 

“ And, supposing no scarlet cloak had appeared ? You would 
willingly have been left, a second Robinson Crusoe, on the desert 
shores of Luc ? ” 

“ The cases are not parallel. Robinson Crusoe had only the 
society of his man Friday.” 

“ And there Wv re no beaux yeux to weep for him ! So many 
years,” observed Linda, “ stand between me and the literature of 
my childhood that I am uncertain about details. But I don’t 
think one ever heard of a Mrs. Crusoe ? ” 

Gaston knew that he was being laughed at. He kept his tem- 
per, charmingly. 

“And there is, very decidedly, a Mrs. Arbuthnot. When I 
think of Dinah, I cannot call Miss Tighe’s advent a misadventure. 
Poor Dinah has a child’s quick capacity for unhappiness. Her 
imagination would have conjured up a dozen possible horrors, by 
sea and land, if I had not returned to her.” 

“ That is all so very, very pretty, is it not ?” Linda stooped, as 
if watching the rush of the sea — Gaston Arbuthnot could not 
catch the expression of her face. “We professioal old travelers 
are toughened and sun-baked out of all rose-water nervousness- 
Robbie has told you — whom does he not tell — the story of my 
being lost, actually lost, in the Nilgiris ? If I were to be mislaid 
for a fortnight, I really don’t believe the Doctor would suffer a 
moment’s uneasiness.” 

“ And yet you were so cruelly upset by his disappearance. The 
superiority,” apostrophized Gaston, “ of the unselfish sex over 
ours.” 

“I was not only upset by his disappearance,” Mrs. Thorne showed 
continued interest in the waves. “ I am disturbed about him in 
ray conscience, still. If Doctor Thorne takes the slightest chill 


288 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


to-night, we shall be having the old jungle fever back upon 
him/’ 

Gaston sympathized as to this contingency, not, as yet, perceiv- 
the drift of Linda’s alarms. 

‘* At Robbie’s age one cannot be over prudent. To run into one 
of these cold Channel fogs might end in something quite too 
serious. And, although the stars make a pretence at shining,” 
Linda raised her head with stationary archness, “the enemy is at 
hand. I feel fog in the air.” 

“ The air is clearer than it has been all day. In another three 
or four hours the sun will have risen. We shall be in Guern- 
sey ” 

“ In another twenty minutes we shall be outside Alderney har- 
bor. I was talking matters over, some minutes ago, with Ozanne.” 
Linda inspected the white hand, resting on the bulwarks, with 
attention. “ And he has most good-naturedly contented to let me 
and Robbie land. By signalling promptly for a boat we shall not 
detain you Princess people five minutes. There is the dearest 
little primitive hotel in Alderney, close to Maxwell Grimsby’s 
diggings. You remember me telling you about it ?” 

Gaston remembered Mrs. Thorne’s telling him about the dearest 
little primitive hotel. 

“ The Doctor will have a good night’s rest to recruit his 
strength, and to-morrow morning, if the day is warm, we shall 
make our way back to our home and infant by the Cherburg 
steamer.” 

Now Maxwell Grimsby, a gunner by profession, a painter by 
love, was one of Gaston Arbuthnot’s best artist friends — best too, 
in the higher acceptation of that much cheapened word. Grimsby 
w^as no manufacturer of prettiness,, no amateur idler. Did not a 
series of beach studies bearing the well-known initials M. G. 
testify to the woj’ld how diligently this very summer’s enforced 
imprisonment in Alderney was put to use ? During the past 
fortnight Gaston had constantly vacillated in his intention of 
looking up his friend, forever declaring how much better work a 
man might do on the grand old rock, yonder, than disturbed by the 
hundred distractions of pleasant, idle, sociable, little Sarnia — never 
starting, forever wishing he were gone ! Here was occasion to his 
hand, a chance of looking up Grimsby without even the prelim- 
inary trouble of packing one’s portmanteau ! 

“ Of course you could not come with us,” asserted Linda, in her 


WIFE AND HUSBAND. 


239 


little undertone of mockery. Mrs. Arbuthnot is such a child ! 
She would conjure up a dozen possible horrors if you were to be 
absent from her so long ? ” 

“ I am not sure that deserting the Princess would be a courteous 
action to our hosts,” said Gaston Arbuthnot, hesitating under the 
first touch of temptation. 

“ You are made of poorer stuff than your cousin,” thought 
Linda, glancing, for a second, at his handsome face. “ To gain a 
victory over Monsieur Geoffrey would be to gain a victory indeed.” 
Then, aloud — If we were to carry away any of the younger peo- 
ple I should feel it treason to desert the Princess” she observed. 
“ I would not go indeed, if Robbie and Ijwere wanted as chaper 
ons. Considering the existence of Mrs. Verschoyle and of Miss 
Tighe — in talking of chaperons, Mr. Apjaiithnot, you and I must 
never forget Miss Tighe — I think Doctor and Mrs. Thorne may 
very well be spared. For you, it is different.” 

“ In what way ? ” asked Gaston, wincing, inwardly, under her 
sarcasms. 

“ Oh, different altogether. Too much depends upon your pres- 
ence. Pray do not think of such a revolutionary proceeding as 
taking flight. You would never be allow — I mean, I am sure 
you would n'bt find it advantageous to run away. What messages 
do you send to Mr. Grimsby ? ” 

“ None.” 

“ That is severe. You do not believe in my delivering them 
intact ? ” 

“ I mean to deliver them myself.” 

Linda Thorne laughed incredulously. “ I wish I could make 
an enormous wager at this thrilling crisis,” she remarked with 
persistence. Come, Mr. Arbuthnot. Will you bet me a single 
pair of gloves that you will . . . that you 'will quit the 

Princess when we do ? ” 

“ It would be betting on a certainty,” said Gaston. “ My 
mind is made up. I am really glad of the cltance of seeing old Max.” 

“You have told me something of the kind already. You refused 
a wager I offered you last Monday afternoon, because it would 
have been ‘betting on a certainty.’ And yet, as the event proved, 
I should have won.” 

“ The event will prove that you do not win now.” 

There was more than^a threat of impatience in Gaston Arbuth- 
not’s voice. ^ 


240 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


And you do accept ray bet, then ? You do stake a pair of 
gloves that you are — that you will land at Alderney with Robbie 
and myself ? 

“ If you are bent upon giving me a pair of gloves, Mrs. Thorne 
— iron gray, seven a-half — I shall accept them with pleasure.” 

“ Done! The bargain is concluded. My number, as you know, 
is six and a quarter, Jouvin’s best. I wear eight buttons. And 
now,” added Linda, preparing to move away, ‘‘ I must find our 
hosts, and make excuses. Had I not better offer them on your 
behalf, too ? ” 

“ You are too kind to me, Mrs. Thorne. I think I have just 
fourage enough to pull through the emergency, unassisted.’^ 

Lord Rex was still lingering in Dinah’s neighborhood when 
Linda tripped airily across to the gangway, Gaston Arbuthnot 
following her. 

“Doctor Thorne and I have to thank you, all, for quite one of 
the most perfect excursions in the world. I shall put a mark 
against the subalterns’ picnic,” said Linda, diplomatically. “It 
has been one of the true red-letter days of my life.” 

“ Don’t talk of the picnic as over, Mrs. Thorne. The subalterns 
look forward to some hours more of your society, even without 
the promised fog.” 

“ Ah, that terrible fog ! I must confess, the word makes me 
nervous, for the Doctor’s sake. A fog, you know, means damp — 
that constant bugbear to us old East Indians.” 

“ But the voyage is half over. Here we are almost in Alderney 
harbor.” 

“'And, here, I am afraid, my husband and I ought to bid you 
all good-night. Captain Ozanne has offered to signal for a boat. 
We should not delay the Princess five minutes. Really and truly, 
Lord Rex, I think the wisest course will be for Doctor Thorne 
to land.” 

“ Doctor Thorne to land ? Another mysterious disappearance! 
And shall you, Mrs. Thorne, immediately follow suit, as you did 
at Luc ? ” 

“ Of course T shall! The whole Luc comedy will be repeated.” 
And here Linda’s voice grew intentionally clear and resonant. 
“ The Luc comedy, with the original cast and decorations, for 
everybody’s amusement.” 

It was a wantonly cruel speech — Dinah Arbuthnot stood within 
hearing! Yet Linda Thorne’s conscience did not upbraid her. 


HUSBANI) AND WIFE. 


241 


She belonged by temperament to the irresponsible class of mortals 
who can never resist the temptation of histrionic effect. For 
what, save histrionic effect, had she cajoled the skipper, the old 
Doctor, Gaston, into this freak of midnight disembarkation ? 
And when once a woman’s tongue and actions are ruled by the 
eternal desire for smart dramatic point, it must be clear that 
other woman’s sufferings will pay the price of her success. 

Dinah’s heart froze. She divined, without going through any 
distinct process of reason, what announcement she was likely to 
hear next. 

“ If the Luc scene is to be repeated, I conclude you, too, are 
going to desert us ? ” 

Lord Rex Basire addressed himself to Gaston Arbuthnot. 

‘‘ Well, it has been borne in upon one during the last fortnight 
hat it was a duty to look up old Grimsby,” began Gaston. ‘ And 
this ” 

“ And this is duty made easy. Go, my dear fellow, if you have 
bad enough of us,” cried Lord Rex, lightly. “ But go on one 
condition — that you do not take Mrs. Arbuthnot. Mrs. Arbuthnot 
is our chaperon-in-chief. We cannot spare her.” 

“Mrs. Arbuthnot has Miss Bartrand under her charge — have 
you not, Dinah ? I am afraid you could scarcely ” 

“I should, under no circumstances, think of landing at ‘Alder- 
ney,” said Dinah, in a voice uncomfortably strange to Gaston’s 
ear. “ I am not afraid of Fog. I do not wish to see Mr. Maxwell 
Grimsby. Why should I leave the Princess ? ” 

“ Where your presence is the life of the whole party,” pleaded 
Lord Rex. “You must not let your husband persuade you into 
throwing us over, Mrs. Arbuthnot.” 

Quietly, firmly, came Dinah’s answer : 

“You need not be afraid. There is no risk of my being per- 
suaded, Lord Rex. I am a great deal too wise,” she added, “ to 
go away from people who care to have me.” 

And no further word of explanation or of farewell was exchanged 
between Dinah and her husband. Into the irrevocable mistakes 
of life is it not singular how men and women constantly drift 
after this blind fashion ? Only at the last moment, when the 
Princess had slackened speed, when the boat that had been sig- 
nalled for was fast approaching from Alderney harbor — only at 
this last moment, I say, Gaston addressed a remark to Geff which 
Dinah felt might be taken by her, if she chose. 


242 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


‘‘ I sha/V be back to-morrow, unless anything very unforeseen 
happens. If it does, I can telegraph for my portmanteau, 
and ” 

Geoffrey whispered a word or two in his cousin’s ear. ‘‘ 
course, of course. I have every intention of coming back. I 
merely said ‘if.’ You will have a magnificent passage,” added 
Gaston, shaking hands heartily with Lord Kex. Duty takes me 
to old Max. Inclination would have kept me with my hosts on 
board the Princess.’* 

Despite the neat tui-ning of this speech, away Mr. Arbuthnot 
and the Thornes went, — Linda, with her cachemires, her bouquets 
of wild flowers, her fears for Kobbie, her waited kisses to her 
friends, creating little theatrical sensations to the last. The boat 
was visible for a few seconds only, so swiftly did the Princess 
again get under way. There was a profuse waving of handker- 
chiefs. Good-night, every one! ” rang cheerly across the water 
in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice. And then Dinah awakened to the 
knowledge that she was forsaken, this time by no accident, but of 
cool-blooded, determined, forethought — forsaken, with all the 
world to see, with Lord Kex Basire persistently talking, as though 
nothing of moment had happened, at her elbow. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


ROSE-WATER SOCIALISM. 

Dinah did not turn from liim. Nay, although her brain was 
in a whirl, although her voice was not under command, although 
her heart was bursting, Dinah’s lips smiled. She was monosyl- 
labic, Lord Rex felt, but monosyllabic with a diiference. And 
eager to improve the scantiest, most meagre encouragement, he 
began instantly to ransack such memory and imagination as were 
his for pertinent subject-matter. 

Frothy small talk, personal compliments, local gossip, were 
little relished, as he had proved, by Dinah Arbuthnot. She did 
not read newspaper trials, had never opened a Society journal, 
knew nothing about actors or actresses, or novels, or prime 
ministers, or popular divines. You could not get her even to talk 
about herself. But then, that face of hers ! If one might, quietly, 
stand gazing at her surpassing fairness as one does at a canvas or 
a marble. Lord Rex Basire, on this summer night, would have 
asked nothing more. His duties as a host, however, the sense 
that others might construe his silence into deficiency of wit, forced 
upon him articulate speech. 

Awful hole, Alderney, for an idle man ! Now I was stationed 
there for three months and got through an awful lot of work. No 
good letting circumstances beat you. I colored a meerschaum 
first rate — worked at it, morning, noon, and night, I taught two 
of my terriers to march on hind legs, while I whistled the ‘ Mar- 
seillaise.* Favorite tune of mine, the ‘ Marseillaise.’ ” 

So your lordship has told me,” 

Dinah thought of their first conversation at the rose-show. 

“ I loathe classic music— loathe everything, in art and literature^ 
but what I can understand. Ever seen Maxwell Grimsby’s 
Alderney sketches, by-the-by ? Dab of greenish-gray for the sea. 


244 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


Dab of blush-gray for the clouds — Storms, Sunsets, Whirlwinds, 
things you may as well frame upside down as straight, if you 
choose.” 

No, Dinah had never seen them. 

“Maxwell Grimsby’s an old friend, isn’t he, of Arbuthnot’s ? 
That a( counts for your husband throwing over all us people on 
board the Pri?icess.” 

To this there was no answer. The balls had, certainly, not 
broken well as regarded Alderney. Clearing his throat twice, after 
a more redoubtable pause than heretofore. Lord Ilex at length 
sought a wild and sudden refuge in English politics. He had never 
in his life talked politics to a pretty woman, reserving his views, 
which were of the rose-water socialistic school, for after-dinner 
eloquence among his brother subs. So desperately new an ex- 
perience as Dinah required desperate measures ! To talk well 
above this young person’s head, thought Lord Rex who held no 
mean opinion of his own intellect, might awe her into apprecia- 
tion. 

And the subject he chose for his experiment was that of class 
inequality. 

The emptiness of all titles, the folly of all social pre-eminence, 
were themes on which Lord Rex waxed liot, exceedingly. Perhaps 
he was sincere. Rose-water socialism, I must admit, did not sit 
without a certain grace on this sunburnt little dandy, a grace to 
which his slinged arm, shot through in the forlorn defence of 
English Empire, gave the added zest of piquancy. 

Dinah unthawed at once. She broke into talk. In the matter 
of class differences, Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife held fixed opinions, 
and could express them incisively. But her ideas were not Lord 
Rex Basire’s ideas. Lord Rex had got a vast deal of rabid rhetoric 
by heart, very picturesque rhetoric in its way, and coming from 
the lips of a Duke’s son. Dinah had sharp, clear knowledge, 
gained, at first hand, through the vicissitudes of her own marriage. 
To Lord Rex social inequality was a pretty question — kind of 
thing, don’t you know, that vehemently cried down, may some- 
times land a man, with a following, in the House ! To Dinah it 
was the hidden enemy, the impalpable barrier that stood between 
her and her husband’s heart. Lord Rex had learnt pages of showy 
axioms to demonstrate that social inequality should never exist. 
Dinah’s life was one long, irrefragable, stubborn proof that it ex- 
isted. 


BOSE-WATER SOCIALISM. 


245 


‘‘Your remarks have a terribly Conservative flavor, Mrs. 
Arbuthnot.” When they had talked for some considerable time 
he told her this. “ Impossible you can be a Conservative, in 
reality ? ” 

“ Gaston calls me an old-fashioned Whig. I don’t know the 
meaning of the word. I only pretend to understand these things 
in the humblest way, from my own standpoint.” 

“ But you are in favor of the nationalization of the land ? You 
would do away with the laws of primogeniture ? You don’t think 
a few thousand loiterers, slave-drivers, should hold big estates — 
for their pheasants — because each elder son, let him be fool, knave, 
or coward, is heir to them ? ” 

“ Without such laws, where would our English families be, my 
lord, our barons, and earls, and great dukes, like your father ? ”* 

“ Oh, where they came from,” said Lord Rex, disposing of the 
question jauntily. “ Labor was the original purchase-money, paid 
for all things. You believe that much, at least, Mrs. Arbuth- 
not ? ” 

‘‘ If the succession law was swept away we might lose more than 
we can afford along with it.” Dinah had heard ultra-revolution- 
ary notions freely aired at times, among Gaston’s friends, and, in 
her one-sided feminine way, had striven, over her cross-stitch, to 
think them out. ‘‘I, for one, should not like to see any church 
or chapel in England turned into a lecture place for these new un- 
believers.” 

“Unbelievers ! Oh, that is quite a different story. We began 
by talking about the folly of class differences.” 

Dinah was silent awhile. Then: “ It would be impossible for you 
and me to think alike on all this,” she told her companion, with a 
grave smile. “You have seen so much of Hie world. Lord Rex, 
perhaps have heard the debates in the Houses of Parliament ? ” 

Lord Rex confessed that this intellectual advantage had befallen 
him. 

“ And I have just watched the lives, the manners of a few more 
or less troubled men and women. Class differences, as you call 
them, may be folly. They are the hardest facts I know, the . . .” 

Dinah saved herself, just in time, from adding, “ the cruellest.’^ 

“Beauty is the universal leveller,” observed Lord Rex, with 
presence of mind. “ A perfectly beautiful woman would grace 
the steps of any throne in Europe.” 

“ Leave thrones alone, Lord Rex Basire ! If the beautiful wo» 


246 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


man wanted to make others happy she would have most chance to 
do so in her own class of life.” 

“ And suppose the beautiful woman wanted to be happy herself, 
Mrs. Arbuthnot ? ” 

“Happiness comes naturally if you see it on the faces of the 
people round you.” 

Their politics had not taken the turn Lord Kex desired. He 
harked back, a little abruptly, upon his first premises. 

“ Tes, I am for absolute equality, Gardener Adam and his wife, 
and that style of thing. I would make the shop-keeping capitalist, 
just as much as the bloated aristocrat, turn over a fresh leaf. If I 
ever marry,” said Lord Kex Basire — “ don’t feel at all like marry- 
ing at present, but if I ever do — I hope to get for my wife some 
simple little village barbarian who has never been to a ball, never 
heard an opera, never seen a racecourse in her life ! ” 

“ A village barbarian — of what station ? ” asked Dinah Arbuth- 
not. 

“ Matter of blank inditference. I should marry the girl, not 
her station.” 

“ And afterwards ? Would the barbarian be accepted by your 
family ? Or would you accept hers ? Or would you, botli, give 
up society ? ” 

“That would suit me best! Give up society. United to the 
woman one adored,” said Lord Kex with fervor, “ what could one 
want with artificial pleasures, with the eternal bore of dinners and 
dances ? ” 

Dinah gave a chill laugh. She remembered the days when Gas- 
ton Arbuthnot was wont to use the like phrases, as a preface (so, 
in her present jealous misery, she thought) to returning to the 
world and its pleasures, unhampered by a wife. 

“ When you marry, my lord,” she observed, distantly, “ you will^ 
if you act wisely, choose some duke’s or earl’s daughter for your 
wife. Give up that notion of the village barbarian. As times 
wore on, and . . , and the truth of things grew clear, the duke’s 
daughter would, at least, understand you. There could be no dis- 
coveries for her to make. ” 

Lord Kex turned and faced Dinah Arbuthnot, good hurnoredly 
ignoring the coldness of her bearing towards himself. 

“ Your opinions are desperately mixed, Mrs. Arbuthnot. You 
may be Conservative in theory — you would be a staunch Kepubli- 
can ill practice! I am afraid, now, that a man with the misf-or-" 


BOSE-WATER SOCIALISM. 


247 


tune — I mean, you know,^’ stammered Lord Rex, lowering his 
voice, ‘‘ that you could never bring yourself to care, ever so little, 
for a man with any wretched sort of handle to his name.” 

“ I beg your pardon, my lord ? ” 

‘‘ A man belonging io the most useless class of all — the class 
that so many of us who are in it would gladly see done away with ! 
Such a man would never find favor in your sight ? ” 

‘‘ Would have found, do you mean, when I was a girl of seven- 
teen ? ” Dinah asked in tones of ice. “ I can give no answer to 
that. Girls’ hearts are moved by such trifles — a title, even, might 
turn the balance ! But I and my sisters lived in a little Devon- 
shire village. We saw nothing whatever of high folks, and ” 

“I am not talking of Devonshire villages!” exclaimed Lord 
Rex, interrupting her petulantly, but drop)ping his voice still 
lower, “I am not talking of the time when you were seventeen — 
1 mean now.” 

Dinah paused, recoiling from him nervously. Idle compliments 
had moved her, at length, to an extent Lord Rex dreamed not of. 
For she could not forget that this was all part of her lesson, that 
her companion was making speeches such as better born women, 
careless mothers, wives of the type of Linda Thorne, might just 
listen lightly to, parry, and forget! With the thought came a 
thought of Gaston. A flood of shame tingled in her cheeks. 

You ask me questions beyond my understanding, Lord Rex.” 
So, after a stringent effort she brought herself to speak. “ My 
choice was made, happily, long ago. How could any man but 
Gaston find favor in my sight ? ” 

Lord Rex Basire, his tender years notwithstanding, had seen 
plenty of good feminine acting, of the kind which dispenses with 
footlights and the critics, the acting required in the large shifting 
comedy of human life. Although his own delicacy was not ex- 
treme, or his perception sensitive, some unspoiled fibre in his 
heart vibrated, responsive to the honesty of Dinah’s voice. This 
woman acted not, could never act! Her fealty to her light, 
neglectful husband was part of herself. Duty and happiness for 
Dinah were simply exchangeable terms. She could taste of the 
one only in the fulfilment of the other. 

That was very charmingly expressed, Mrs. Arbuthnot. I 
hope, when I marry, my wufe will say the same pretty things of 
me, if I deserve them, which I shall not ! Characters like mine 
don’t reform.” 


248 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


There will be more chance of reformation if you marry than if 
you don’t — especially if you choose the duke’s daughter,” added 
Dinah stiffly, “ not the barbarian.” 

And without any marrying at all! If some woman, as good as 
she is fair, would hold out her hand to me in friendship, would 
let me think that I held a place rather lower than a favorite dog 
or horse would hold in her regard ! If — if — ah, Mrs. Arbuthnot ! 
if you ” 

But Lord Rex speedily discovered that he was apostrophizing 
the waves and the stars. At the moment when his eloquence 
waxed warmest, Dinah Arbuthnot, village barbarian that she was^ 
had walked away, without one syllable of excuse, from his lord- 
ship’s side ! 

He watched the outlines of her figure as long as they were dis- 
cernible through the gloom ; then, drawing forth his vesuvians 
and tobacco-pouch, prepared to smoke a lonely pipe of wisdom on 
the bridge. Lord Rex was in a fever of perplexity. Until the last 
five days, he had never cared for living mortal but himself. His 
brief fealties to the prettiest face of the hour, Rosie Yerschoyle’s 
among the number, had been so many offerings at the shrine of 
small personal vanity. All this was over. His surrender to 
Dinah’s nobler beauty, his recognition of Dinah’s pure and up- 
right nature, had roused him thoroughly out of self, made him 
look searchingly at the aims, the pleasures of life, and acknowl- 
edge that there were human affections, human fidelities, high 
above the range of his own light and worldly experience. Did 
happiness thrive in that loftier, chill atmosphere ? Was Gaston 
Arbuthnot to be congratulated, wholly, on his lot ? 

One thing was certain — so Rex Basire decided, as he betook 
himself gloomily to the bridge. However this drama of domestic 
life might end, it would be monstrous, impossible, that he, Rex 
Basire, should be peremptorily dismissed therefrom, dismissed, as 
one occasionally sees the frustrated stage villain, long before the 
final falling of the curtain ! 

And even if it so,’ mused Lord Rex, half aloud, and drawing 
upon reminiscences of Nap. in his ill-humor, ‘Mf no choice lies 
before one but to ‘ accept misery, misery let it be ! The man who 
goes blue does not invariably find himself in the worst position at 
the end of the game ” 

But the lad’s philosophy was lip-deep only. Lord Rex Basire 
had never felt less cynically indifferent to loss or gain than in 
this hour. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


CLOSE TO PORT. 

The short June night drew to its close, and still the weather 
continued fair. The sky was full of stars, a solitary lambent 
planet quivered in the east. By the time the moon had sunk, with 
pale metallic glow, above the motionless Channel, a welcome 
point of fire was visible over the starboard bow of the vessel — the 
beacon of Castle Cornet lighthouse. 

A little flutter ran through the groups of expectant people 
keeping watch together upon the deck of the Princess, It was 
well to have got back safely, and without fog. And still, whis- 
pered the younger ones regretfully, the most delightful picnic in 
the world had come to an end, all too soon ! Even Mrs. Verschoyle, 
emerging with salts-bottle, with chattering teeth, from the cabin, 
conceded that, for a yachting expedition ; and although TAncresse 
Common would have been a thousand times more reasonable, their 
misadventures had been few. How comforting, murmured the 
poor lady, with a shudder, if it were not for the cold — this 
curiously increasing cold — to keep one’s eye on the familiar Har- 
born light, to realize that in another hour and a half, at latest, 
they would be all warm and asleep and in their beds ! 

But the cold increased still, and for a midsummer night, was 
undoubtedly no common cold. It found its way through plaids 
and waterproofs, it got down throats, it caused fingers to become 
numbed. The mate was seen to button up his pilot jacket as he 
made his way with precipitate haste to the men on watch ; the 
skipper moved from one foot to the other as he stood consulting 
his compass. Both skipper and mate glanced anxiously ahead 
towards the west, where no horizon showed. 

“ One would scarcely have expected the stars to set so suddenly,” 
observed Mrs. Verschoyle. In this lady’s youth it is probable 
that school-girls did not, as now, learn the exact sciences. But 
depend upon it, the captain knows his way. The sailors are taking 
precautions, I heard the steward say so downstairs, by using the 


250 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


lead. And I remarked that they were seeing most attentively to 
the small boats. Besides, I have heard more than one gun fired. 
No sound so reassuring at sea as the report of a gun ! A skilled 
old mariner like Ozanne would not be dependent on anything so 
chancy as the stars.” 

“ But, mamma, the Harbor lightliouse has set, too,” cried Kosie 
Verschoyle, who stood, shivering, at her mother’s side. Every- 
thing is setting. I don’t see our own funnel. I don’t see the 
flower in your bonnet as clearly as I did two minutes ago.” 

“ I wish you would talk soberly, child. You know how much 
I dislike this kind of ill-timed flippancy. Who ever heard of a 
lighthouse setting ?” observed Mrs. Yerschoyle, with melancholy 
common sense, ‘‘ and why does the Princess go so slow' ? The 
skipper, no doubt, has his reasons, still he might remember w'e 
are not all as fond of the sea as he is. I never was less nervous 
in my life, and — Sailor! Sailor!” Mrs. Yerschoyle flung herself 
before a figure, w'rapped up in tarpaulin, crowned by a sou’-wester 
which loomed with gigantic proportions through the thick air. 

“ Would you say, if you please, why the steamer goes so slow ? 
And are we in danger — oft our track or anything ? And why does 
one seem all at once to lose sight of Castle Cornet lighthouse ? ” 

The sailor was a weatherbeaten old Guernseyman, possessing 
about twelve w'ords of Anglo-Saxon in his vocabulary. Mrs. 
Yerschoyle, however, in her agonized desire for truth, stretched 
her arms forth in the direction of the vanished red light. She 
also articulated the words Castle Cornet with tolerable distinct- 
ness. Her meaning had made itself clear. 

The answer, proceeding from the depths of a £;ruff, tobaccoey 
throat, was incisive: 

“Brouillard!” 

And brouillard it proved, clammy, ice-cold, yellow, after the / 
manner of all mid-channel fogs. At first, every one affected to 
take this reverse of fortune as a jest, the little bit of mock danger 
that w'as needed to point a moral to the preceding day's enjoy* 
ment. So providential, said the ladies, in a pious but quavering 
chorus, that the Princess lay close on shore before the fog grew 
thick. The skipper’s duty, clearly, w'as to make straight for St. 
Peter’s Harbor and land them. Only, why lose time? Wliy steam 
so slowly ? What object could Captain Ozanne have in exposing 
them to this mortal cold a moment longer than w'as needful ? 


CLOSE TO PORT, 


251 


Mrs. Yerschoyle, after a few minutes’ suspense, voted for in- 
dependent action. She had, indeed, broached a project of creep- 
ing up to the men at the wheel and imploring them to turn 
faster,” when there came a general stir among the crew, followed 
by a rattling sound which most of the party had sufficient sea- 
going experience to recognize. The Princess was about to cast 
her anchor. 

Just at this juncture appeared Lord Kex, fresh from hurried 
consultations with Ozanne and the boatswain. A suspicious un- 
concern was on Lord Rex Basire’s face, a note of forced cheerful- 
ness in his tone. ’ 

“ Lucky we have got so near home, is it not, Mrs. Yerschoyle ? 
We are about two miles from shore, they say — Ozanne, of course, 
knows every yard of water — just within or without the Grunes 
whatever the Grunes may mean. We shall only have to ride 
half an hour or so at anchor — awfully jolly sensation, I can tell 
you, with a south-west swell ! And then, as the mist rises, we 
shall steam clean into Petersport.” 

But this show of jauntiness misled no one. The de Carterets, 
Cassandra Tighe, Mrjorie Bartrand, all understood their position 
better than did Lord Rex. And it was a position of the utmost 
gravity. The Princess was lying in dense fog, surrounded by 
shoals, across the very highway of the Channel night steamers 
For an old and wary seaman like Ozanne to have been forced to 
anchor at such a strait did but render the fact of his helplessness 
more pointed. 

“ Wliat does it all mean ? Are we not close to port, madam ? ” 

The ladies were pressing together in groups. Dinah whispered 
the question across Cassandra Tighe’ s shoulder. 

“ Close to port — of one kind or another! ” answered Cassandra, 
vaguely unorthodox to the last. ‘‘As long as nothing runs into 
us we may do well enough. And dawn is at hand. At sunrise 
the fog may lift. Your husband ought to be here, with you,” she 
added, misinterpreting a certain vibration of Dinah’s voice. 

“ I thank God he is not! Alone, there is nothing to be fright- 
ened about. I thank God that Gaston is safe— warmly housed, 
away in Alderney!” 

And, in truth, a reasonless, half-pleasurable excitement, the 
reaction after so much dull pain, had arisen in Dinah’s heart. 

That a dark “Perhaps” lay straight and immediately before 


252 


A GIETON GIRL. 


them, became at each moment more plain. The continued firing 
of guns gave token that other vessels were in the same plight as 
the Princess — once, indeed, a steamer drifted so close that they 
could see the faint reflection of her signal lamps, could hear the 
beating of her gong. The dreary sound of the fog-horn, the 
muffled tramp of the men on w'atch, the lights burning aloft in 
the ship’s rigging, the partially lowered boats, the solemn faces of 
the skipper and the crew, all combined into one unspoken word— 
Danger, 


CHAPTER XXXiy. 


DEAD ROSE PETALS. 

Dinah Arbuthnot thought over the few quarrels, the many 
misunderstandings of her married life, grown little, all, before the 
hour's largeness. She thought how, in five or six minutes more 
— a collision in weather like this would be over briefly — in five or 
six minutes more she and Gaston might be parted, with never an- 
other kiss from his lips to hers. He would cherish the thought of 
her to his last breath , if she were lost to-night. She recognized 
the true metal in the man, was sure enough of that. Possibly the 
remembrance of her, calm and untroubled in her grave, might 
prove a stronger influence over liim for good, a keener stiniulu's to 
his genius, than her restless, jealous life had ever been. 

On such terms, she asked herself, was death a thing to be met 
with craven fear ? 

Most of the party, obeying simple bodily wretchedness, crept 
one after another below, poor frightened, frozen Mrs. Verschoyle 
at length confessing that she would sooner be drowned comfort- 
ably in the cabin than stand up longer against the sickening roll of 
the anchored vessel on deck. Marjorie Bartrand, Dinah, and Miss 
Tighe lingered. Lord Rex and Geoffrey Arbiithnot (forced into 
comradeship for once) keeping up their spirits with cheerful talk, 
with stories well remembered or well invented, until a pale fore- 
cast of daylight began slowly, uncertainly, to filter through the 
fog. Then came a new untoward event to crown this night of 
misfortune. A lad on the forecastle had stumbled in the dark- 
ness over a coil of chain, and a cry quickly arose that the sur- 
geon’s hand was wanted. The poor fellow lay in agony, with a 
twisted or broken ankle. Was there not some doctor on board 
among the gentlemen who could help him ? 

Away sped Geoffrey Arbiithnot on the instant, bestowing no 
consolatory word — Marjorie’s heart honored him for the omission 

on the ladies thus abandoned to their terrors and their fate. 

“And now,” said old Cassandra Tighe, hollow and far-away her 
voice sounded through the blanket of fog, “ I think w^e women 
folk will do well to betake ourselves elsewhere. Mr. Geoffrey 


254 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


A ’buthnot has set iis an example of duty. You have been a 
pattern host,” she added, addressing Lord Rex, ‘‘ and it is right 
you should be set free. We must take our chance with the others 
in the cabin. You hear me, Marjorie Bartrand ? ” 

Marjorie heard, but was stoutly recalcitrant. It was her duty, 
she said, to die hard, and according to Act of Parliament. She 
would in no wise give up her chance of the boats, should a collision 
befall the Princess’ could swim like a sea-gull if the worst came 
to the worst. Lord Rex, of course, must be considered off duty. 
For herself, if Mrs. Arbuthnot would stay with her under one of 
the covered seats, she asked nothing better than to stop on deck 
and watch for sunrise. Cold ? How would it be possible to take 
cold at midsummer — swathed, too, in all these wraps, and with 
the excitement of a first-class adventure to maintain the circulation 
of one’s blood ? 

And indeed, there burned a flame in Marjorie’s breast that kept 
her whole being warm, a flame, pure and delicate, the like of 
which kindles in these poor hearts of ours once only, perhaps, 
between our cradle and our shroud. 

“We are dismissed. Miss Tighe,” said Lord Rex, gallantly of- 
fering his unwounded arm, as Cassandra tottered to her feet. 
“ Cling to me like grim death. Don’t mind appearances. If Mrs. 
Arbuthnot and Miss Bartrand have the courage to freeze, we must 
leave them to become icicles. I want to see what can be done for 
our poor terrified ladies down below.” 

Lord Rex must have seen to the terrified ladies expeditiously. 
Five minutes later he was at his post again, no rug, no great-coat 
about his shoulders — with feminine appreciation of detail, Dinah 
was prompt to mark this sign of self-forgetfulness — simply 
hovering near, ready, she reluctantly acknowledged, to buy her 
life with his own should the moment of peril really come. 

And Gaston Arbuthnot all this time, was taking his rest quietly 
irresponsible, away in Alderney! Dinah, being a just woman, 
did not credit her neglectful husband with the density of the 
fog. Still, in danger as in safety, the master passion possessed 
her heart. Her thoughts, at one moment tender, at the next 
reproachful, were of Gaston always. And her lips kept silence. 
Marjorie Bartrand also was disinclined to talk. In Marjorie’s 
mind thrilled a remembrance so sweet, so new, that she was glad 
passively to rest under it, as we rest under the influence of a good 
and wholesome dream — a remembrance of the half confession mada 


DEAD BOSE PETALS. 


255 


to her in the Langrune lane, whose flower smells and swaying 
yellow corn lingered in her senses still. And thus, happiness 
being a far liklier narcotic than pain, it came to pass ere long 
that while Dinah Arbutlmot watched with ever-increasing vigil- 
ance, the young girl’s eyes grew heavy. The sound of the fog- 
horn at each interval roused her up less effectually, her head 
dropped upon her companion’s shoulder. “ Your wish has come 
true, although 1 have the misfortune to be myself not Gaston.” 
The cold and darkness vanished, blessed sunshine began to shine 
around her, the fog-horn changed to the note of the cricket among 
the ripening corn-fields. Marjorie Bartrand slept. 

By this time Dinah judged the sun must be close upon rising. 
It seemed to her that the different objects on board were growing 
a very little clearer. Moving with difficulty from her position, 
she rolled up a pillow out of one of the plaids, and slipped it 
under Marjorie’s sleeping head. She enveloped the girPs whole 
figure in the thickest of their nigs, then began to pace, as sharply 
as her stiffened limbs would allow, up and down a short portion 
of the deck. 

“ We are not to say ‘ ta ta’ to the wicked world this time, Mrs. 
Arbutlmot.” The wise remark was Lord Rex Basire’s. He had 
been absent during the last quarter of an hour, and now reap" 
peared bearing a salver on which stood a cup of smoking coffee. 
(Looking back in after hours on the shifting scenes of this night, 
Dinah often felt, remorsefully, that her most fragrant and excel- 
lent coffee was prepared by Lord Rex’s own hand.) “ I over- 
heard the steward talking with the mate just now and they 
prophesy a change of wind. If this comes true, the fog will lift 
in half an hour. See, I have brought you some coffee.’^ 

Dinah glanced towards Marjorie. 

Oh, Miss Bartrand is fast asleep, dreaming of triposes and 
Girton! I watched her nodding before I went below. It wmuld 
be cruelty to wake her.” 

“ I must say the coffee smells tempting,” Dinah admitted. 
Then, swayed by a quick impulse : “ Lord Rex, you are very 
unselfish !” she exclaimed. “You have thought of nothing but 
other people, and their troubles, all this night.” 

“On the contrary, I have thought of myself. I have had a 
capital time, Mrs. Arbutlmot — for I have been near you.” 

Dinah never looked more nobly handsome than at this moment. 
A cold night passed without sleep, a greenish-yellow fog, must 
be fatal adversaries, at 3 a.m., to all mere prettiness. DinalPs 


256 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


beauty could stand alone, without coloring, without animation. 
The lines of her head and throat, the full calm eyelids, the Iii)S, 
the chin, could be no more shorn of their fair proportions than 
would those of the Venus Clytie — should the Venus Clytie chance 
to be exposed to the mercy of a Channel fog. 

‘‘ You have been near a very stupid person, my lord. I have 
had too much heaviness in my heart to talk,” confessed Dinah. 
“ I have scarce exchanged a dozen words even with Miss Bar- 
trand. 

“ Mrs. Arbuthnot, have you forgiven me ? — do, please, drink 
your coffee before it is cold — don’t make me feel that I am in 
your way — boring you, as usual; have you forgiven a horribly 
foolish speech I made, just before you disappeared in the dark- 
ness, you know ?” 

VV^hich foolish speech ?” asked Dinah Arbuthnot, laconically, 
but innocent of sarcasm. 

‘‘ Ah, which ? I am glad you are good-naturedly inexact. And 
still,” went on Lord Rex with characteristic straightforwardness, 
“ foolish or not, I meant every word I said. If the woman I loved 
was free, would look at me, I should be a changed man, would 
make my start in the world to-morrow.” 

“ Make your start ? ” repeated Dinah, off her guard. 

Yes. Look after sheep in New Zealand, plant canes, or what- 
ever they do plant, in South America, and feel that with her, and 
for her, I was leading a man’s life.” 

For a moment Dinah Arbuthnot’s pity verged on softness. 

Listening to the genuine thrill in Rex Basire’s tone, glancing 
at the lad, in his thin drenched jacket, as he stood, holding the 
salver ready for her coffee-cup, his devotion — by reason, perhaps, 
of a certain unacknowledged contrast — touched her. For a 
moment only Then she stood, self-accused, filled with a sicken- 
ing detestation of her own weakness. That she was more than 
indifferent, pei-sonally, to Rex Basire, that he would have been 
distasteful to her in the days when she was fancy free, the girlish 
days before she first saw Gaston, extenuated nothing to Dinah’s 
sensitive conscience. She had tacitly condoned the folly of Rex 
Basire’s talk! Latent in her heart there must be the same 
vanity, the same small openness to flattery that she had, without 
stint, condemned in women like Linda Thorne. Was this self- 
knowledge a necessary sequel to the abundantly bitter lessons 
'Which the last twenty-four hours had brought her ? 


BEAD ROSE PETALS. 


257 


“ Do your forgive me, ^Irs. Arbutlmot ? Speak one word, only. 

I should be the most miserable wretch living if I thought I had 
offended you, consciously, or unconsciously.’' 

“ I have nothing to forgive.” But the tone was unlike Dinah’s. 
She, herself, could detect its artificial ring. “ On the contrary, 
you have done me a service. You have given me hot coffee when 
I was perishing with cold.” 

A smile touched her lij^s, and, seeing this, and led away by her 
evasive answer. Lord Rex took courage. 

“Whatever evil luck the future may hold in store,” he ex- 
claimed, “I shall have this moment to look back upon. ‘Just 
once,’ I shall be able to say, ‘ on board a Channel steamer in a fog, 
the most beautiful of her sex ’ ” 

“ Begs pardon, sir,” cried a hearty voice, close at hand. ‘‘ If 
you and the young lady’ll just step aside from this rope, here ! 
Begs pardon, little Miss. A stalwart, rough-handed sailor touched 
Marjorie’s shoulder as though he were touching a bird. “ Trouble 
you all to move a bit out of this, ladies! Captain’s just a-going to 
heave anchor. We want a clear passage down the ship.” 

And as they moved, and while Marjorie was still rubbing the 
sleep from her heavy eyes, began one of those gorgeous transfor- 
mation pageants, only to be witnessed in the fog districts of 
Europe. Through the uncertain twilight, a violet streak that 
might be taken for coast, was already visible on the port bow. 
Anon, to eastward, came a glow, felt rather than seen, by the 
eager watchers on board the Frhicess. A tint of pinkish-yellow 
began to filter through the driving mists. Then the Avind 
strengthened. In another minute an enchantment of solemn 
flame and amber rose over the distant table-land of Sark, a sensa- 
tion of warmth tingled in the air. The fog Avreaths sank, as if 
drawn doAvn by magic hands into the waters, and Petersport, its 
Avindows twinkling, its red roofs bathed in purest sunshine, lay 
disclosed. 

A quarter of an hour later the Princess was in harbor. Not a 
carriage, not a luggage truck stood on the deserted quays. One 
conveyance only wa.s to be seen, Cassandra Tighe’s village cart. 
Her faithful old factotum, Annette, stood at the pony’s head. 
Among the smart, Anglicized young island servants it was the 
fashion to call Annette a little weak-headed. Tears of joy 
streamed down the honest creature’s cheeks — symptoms, one 
Avould say, of a strong heart rather than a Aveak head — as Cassan- 
dra, scarlet cloak, nets, boxes, and all, crossed the gangway. 
Mistress and serving-woman kissed each other on the cheeks. 
Then arose the question of transport. How many souls could one 
tiny village cart be made to carry ? 

“ Mrs. Verschoyle, of course, and Mrs. Arbutlmot. Oh, from 
Mrs. Arbutlmot” cried Cassandra, “I Avill receiv^e no denial. 
Miller’s Hotel lies on the way to Mrs. Verschoyle’s house, and we 
Avould not for worlds ” — Cassandra glanced obliquely at Lord Rex 
Basire — “ take any of our tired hosts out of their way. The 
young ladies can walk safely home together in a band, a case of 
mutual chaperonage. All but Marjorie Bartrand. You, Mar- 


258 


A Gin TON GIRL, 


jorie,” said Miss Tiglie, ‘‘ are my bad sixpence. I don’t know 
how to get you off rny bands.” 

Lord Rex rather faintly suggested that he sliould conduct Miss 
Bartrand to the Manoir. But Marjorie laughed at the idea of 
wanting an escort. 

I would walk, alone, from the pier to Tintajeux, any dark 
midnight in December, and enjoy the walk. Many thanks, Lord 
Rex, but I prefer ray own company. I — I ” 

She hesitated, stopped short. Geoffrey Arbuthnot had joined 
them. Plis patient w’as going on well, would be carried by his 
mates to the hospital as soon as the hospital doors were opened, 
some two hours hence. “ And I am free,” added Geff. ‘‘ Just in 
time, I hope, Miss Bartrand, to walk out with you to Tintajeux ? ” 

“ Oh, no, Mr. Arbuthnot. Miss Bartrand would prefer her own 
company,” cried a quartette of mischievous girls’ voices in chorus. 

But Marjorie had generally the courage of her opinions. Geff 
Arbuthnot got one glance from beneath a sweep of jetty lashes 
which told him that he was not rejected. 

Aw^ay started the village cart, Annette urging the pony to a 
gallop over the rough Guernsey quays. In less than ten minutes’ 
time Dinah had bidden good-bye to Mrs. Verschoyle and Cassan- 
dra, and with nerveless touch was pushing back the garden gate 
of Miller’s hotel. 

Mindful of Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot’s possible return, the ser- 
vants had left unbolted an unconspicuous side-door by wdiich 
Gaston usually came in when he was out late. Tbrough this door 
Dinah entered. With weary steps she made her way to her sitting- 
room. Then, drawing up the blind, she looked round her, almost 
as one might look who, for the first time after a death, stands face 
to face wdth the familiar objects of his ruined life. 

Something had, forever, died since she left this room. Gaston’s 
sketch-books, some of his modelling tools, his chalks, w^ere scat- 
tered on a table. A white rose she gave him before they started, 
yesterday, lay withered on the window-seat. Dinah took the 
flower in her hand, mechanically. Its indefinable, delicate aroma, 
Gaston’s favorite scent, unlocked a thousand poignant associa- 
tions in the poor girl’s brain. Their days of courtship, their first 
married happiness, nay, her owm perfect unsw^erving loyalty, seem- 
ed all to have become as falsehood to her. She had learnt her 
lesson over-well, had eaten of the tree of knowledge, Avould walk 
in Eden, at her lover’s side, no more. 

It was a moment of such blank surrender, such total sense of 
loss, as comes but once in a lifetime. 

Fortunately, the world’s average of hope remains constant, 
poor consolation though an acquaintance with the law" may be to 
the hopeless At this moment rapid steps approached along the 
pavement. There was the sound of hearty youthful laughter. 
Looking forth, the rose crushed with passion between lier cold 
hands, Dinah beheld a young girl and a man pass the window. It 
was Marjorie and Geff, starting aw"ay, with buoyant pace, in the 
direction of Tintajeux. A prophecy of all the joint to-morrows 
of their lives shone brightly on the faces of both. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 


A TRAITRESS. 

But their speech betrayed them not. Roseate stage of the 
passion when unacknowledged lovers are conscious each of the 
other’s secret, yet talk upon commonplace subjects, look celibacy, 
stoutly, in the face, still. If that hour only lasted! If the 
clover would not lose its first honied sweetness, if the gold would 
stop on the wheat-fields, if the thrushes would sing love-ditties 
till September, instead of becoming respectable heads of families 
in June! 

“ You put forth to sea as a martyr, so I will not ask if you have 
enjoyed yourself, Mr. Arbuthnot. I have. Without giving up a 
prejudice against military folk in general,” said Marjorie Bartrand, 
‘‘I pronounce the subalterns’ picnic to have been a success.” 

^‘Success — looked at from whose focus, Miss Bartrand? Poor 
Jack, with his twisted ankle, scarcely appreciated the cleverness 
with which we managed to kill a day and night of our existence, 
depend upon it.” 

Xor did Mrs. Yerschoyle. ‘ If we had only been drinking tea,’ 
so I heard her make moan through the fog — ‘ drinking tea as 
we used on L’Ancresse Common, when the Colonel was in com- 
mand! ’ 

“ Miss Tighe, at least, enjoyed herself. Other conquests may 
have been made,” observed Geoffrey, a little iiiappositefy. ‘‘ Miss 
Tighe captured anew butterfly! A human being with a hobby 
possesses a joy that all the sorrows and passions of our common 
nature cannot rob him of.” 

But neither Mrs. Yerschoyle nor Cassandra served to open out 
wider interests. The conversation flagged sensibly, and Marjorie’s 
pace quickened. For the first time since she began to read with 
Geff, Marjorie felt that she was at a loss for subjects in talking to 
her tutor. 

“ I am afraid your cousin, Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot, did not take 
much pleasure out of the day. 


260 


A GIRT ON GIRL. 


She made the remark after some hesitation and without look- 
ing round at Geoffrey’s face. 

“ It was a mistake for Dinah to go,” Geoffrey answered, keep- 
ing his gaze very straight before him. “Dinah’s life is a dull one. 
The kind of Bohemian wandering existence which suits Gaston as 
an artist robs his wife of the household tasks in which she could 
take honest heart. If 1 were not so mortally afraid of you, Miss 
Bar Iran d ” 

“ I should use a French phrase.” 

‘‘ Please do! I delight in your command of modern languages.” 

‘‘I should call Dinah desoeuvree.” Geff, you may be sure, 
pronounced the Avord atrociously. “ But she will never find com- 
pensation by frequenting Gaston’s world. At this moment poor 
Dinah, 1 know, feels heavier in spirit than if she had stayed 
quietly at home with her book and her cross-stitch.” 

“ She is beautiful beyond praise. In these regions one gets tired 
of mere pink and white prettiness. It is a thing of the climate. 
Every girl in the Channel Islands has her day of good looks. Mrs. 
Arbuthnot’s is a face ol which you could never grow tired.” 

“ I believe I am no judge of beauty. Gaston tells me frequently 
to admire people who to my taste are horrible monsters — ‘ type 
Kubens,’ I think he calls them It requires an education to ad- 
mire the ‘type Kubens.’ One does not like a face, or one does 
like it — too much, perhaps, for one’s own peace.” 

Geff spoke in a tone that brought the blood into Marjorie’s 
cheeks. The girl had blushed with other feelings could she have 
guessed — she, who would accept second love from a man — that at 
this moment his thoughts had wandered to a remote Cambridge- 
shire Aullage, and to the peace of mind he lost there ! 

“ Mrs. Arbuthnot seems to me so thrown away — you must let 
me speak, although I know it is a subject on which you can bear 
no contradiction — so cruelly thrown away upon a man like your 
cousin Gaston.” 

“ No other woman would suit my cousin Gaston half as well.” 

“ That is the true man’s way of putting things. ‘ Suit Gaston.’ 
Would not a less Frenchified, less universally popular husband, 
suit Dinah better ? ” 

“ I am quite sure Dinah, who should be a competent judge, 
would answer ‘No.’ Miss Bartrand,” broke off Geoffrey, with 
notable directness and point. “ I wonder why you and I are 


A TBAITBESS, 261 

discussing other people’s happiness just at an hour when we ought 
to be thinking about our own ? ” 

The remark was made with Geff’s usual seriousness. But 
Marjorie, reading between the lines, discerned some obvious joke 
therein. She laughed until the high-banked road along which 
they walked re-echoed to her fresh voice. Then, starting at a 
brisk run, she took flight along a foot-track which, diverging from 
the chaussee, led through a couple of breast-high corn-fields, 
across a corner of the common land, to Tintajeux. 

Untaught daughter of nature though she was, Marjorie knew 
that every moment brought the supreme one nearer in which 
Geoffrey Arbuthnot must speak to her of love. Although the 
conclusion was foregone, although her whole girlish fancy was 
won, she strove, with such might as she possessed, to stave that 
moment off. For she knew that she was a traitress to her cause, 
an apostate from the man-despising creed in which, recollecting 
the sins of Major Tredennis, she had gloried. 

Fast as her limbs would bear her the girl sped on, Geff Arbuth- 
not, with swinging, slow run, nicely adjusted to her pace, fol- 
lowing half a-dozen yards behind. “ Renegade I ” every bush along 
the familiar path cried aloud to her. “ Renegade,” whispered the 
stream trickling .down between rushy banks, through beds of 
thick forget-me-nots, to the short. The corn-fields were soon 
passed. They reached the breezy bit of moor above the Hiiets. 
The ravine where the water* lanes met lay in purple shadow: all 
around was warm and joyous sunshine A scent of fern and wild 
thyme filled the air. Far away the tide curled round the dark 
base of the Gros Nez range. The choughs and daws were flying 
across the face of the cliffs The gulls poised and swooped, 
flashes of intense white against the background of green sea. 

For very want of breath Marjorie presently stopped short. Geff 
was at her side in a couple of seconds. The young man caught 
her in his arms 

“Mr. Arbuthnot . . Sir!” 

“ I thought it my duty to steady you.” He liberated her, 
partially, and with reluctance. “ Your pace. Miss Bartrand, is 
killing. Do the Guernsey Sixties ever play hare and hounds ? 
You would make areally respectable hare, I can tell you.” 

“Thope not.” With a little air of ill maintained stiffness 
Marjorie contrived to put a few more inches between Geoffrey and 


262 


A Gin TON GIRL. 


herself. “Who would wish to be anything really respectable, un- 
til one gets to the age of the Seigneur, at least ? ” 

“We shall both of us be too stiff for hare and hounds by that 
time.” 

Perhaps this was the first hour of his life when Geoffrey Ar- 
buthnot talked nonsense with a child’s sense of enjoyment, a 
child’s immunity from care. Hard facts, hard work, had made 
up the sum of his existence, hitherto. His staunchest friends 
complained that he was just a little too grimly lord of himself. 
In his undergraduate days the men of his year, despite their re- 
cognition of his active and sterling qualities, had a suspicion 
that there lurked a skeleton in some hidden closet of Arbuthiiot 
of John’s, a memory, or a dread which rendered the easy philo- 
sophy of youth impossible to him. 

Dinah, who knew him well, Gaston who knew him better never 
saw the look on Gefl Arbuthnot’s strong face which lit it in the 
red freshness of this Guernsey morning. 

“ How shamefully we lose the best hours of the day I ” Marjorie’s 
hand rested, as she spoke, on a wicket-gate, overgrown by sweet- 
briar, that led into the Manoir gardens. “ Did you ever smell 
cherry-pie so sweet before ? ” Heliotrope was a passion with old 
Andros Bartrand. Rows of the odorous purple bloom, profusely 
flourishing in this generous climate, garnished the borders even 
of his kitchen garden. “ 1, for one, mean to mend my ways. I 
shall get up with the sun from this day forth.” 

“Alter my hours, then. We could read together, out of doors, 
at sunrise, just as well as in the schoolroom at eleven.” 

“ Do you think we should do much serious work, Mr. Arbuth- 
not ? ” 

Marjorie askeh the question with assurance, then colored up to 
the roots of her hair. 

“ Not unless breakfast were part of the programme,” said 
Geoffrey, with discernment. “ At this moment,” he added, “ I 
am reminded of my schoolboy days in the City. I recall, 
forcibly, the starvation pangs that used to unman us on dreary 
winter mornings over the pages of our Latin Grammar and Greek 
Delectus.” 

It w’as not a sentimental speech. Even when treading the 
primrose path, nineteenth century young people are rarely indiffer- 
ent, like the heroic lovers of an older school, to their meals. And 
these young people had really eaten nothing since yesterday’s 


A TRAITRESS. 


263 


dinner at Langrune. Confessing that she too was famished, Mar- 
jorie proposed an instant sack of the Tintajeux dairy and larder. 
Thei*e was a broken pane in one of the dairy casements, through 
which, luck befriending them, a bolt might be drawn. From the 
dairy it would be only a step to the larder, and then, having se- 
cured their booty, they could go forth and eat their breakfast 
together in Arcadia. 

“It is a bigger adventure, I can tell you, Mr. Arbuthnot, than 
any which befell us on board the Princess. Grandpapa and Syl- 
vestre keep loaded carbines, and are quite casual as to time and 
place in the matter of firing their weapons off.’^ 

“ I am not fond of carbines — still, hunger overcomes my natural 
cowardice,” said Geoffrey. “ I would brave Sylvestre — I would 
brave the Seigneur himself for a bowl of milk.” 

The dairy, almost hidden from view by thickly-planted alders, 
lay at the northern end of the Manoir, immediately under a window 
of the Seigneur’s study. 

“ You hold your life in your hand,” whispered Marjorie, as they 
stepped noiselessly along. “ Grandpapa is always astir by this 
hour. If he were to look through his window, you see, he might 
fire first and recognize you afterwards.” 

“Although you are my accomplice ? ” 

“ He would be in the right, any way, according to old Norman 
law. What is a Seigneur worth if he may not use firearms at dis- 
cretion ? We should lodge the accident officially, au greffe, plead 
self-defence, if the case ever came to be heard, and pay an amende 
of a few hundred francs to the island poor.” 

She gave a little final shrug of her shoulders, which expressed 
that the subject was disposed of. 

The broken pane, shrouded in green leaves, was conveniently 
near the casement bolt. Sufficient space existed for Marjorie’s 
slim hand to pass through the opening. There came a click as 
she slipped the bolt back in its setting a slight groaning sound 
as Geoffrey Arbuthnot lifted the sash guardedly. Then the 
heiress of Tintajeux made good a somewhat undignified entrance 
into her own house, her tutor keeping watch for possible intruders 
outside. 

Oh! the ice-cool sweetness of this Guernsey dairy, the air enter- 
ing in free currents through gratings on either wall, the big pans 
filled with golden cream, the butter of yesterday’s churning stand- 
ing, in tempting pats, upon the fair white shelves! Marjorie 


264 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


plunged a jug boldly into a pan of milk only set last night. It 
seemed — as she remembered Suzelte, the fiery-tempered dairy- 
maid — like a first plunge into crime. Conscience, however, as oc- 
curs in weightier matters than pillaging cream, hardened rapidly. 
To glide, on tiptoe, from the dairy to the larder, to cut some solid 
trenches from a new-baked raisin loaf intended for the Seigneur’s 
lunch-table, was a minute’s work. 

Then Miss Bartrand handed out her spoils to Geoffrey Arbuth- 
iiot. She cleared the window at a jump. The sash was stealthily 
closed, the boughs were pulled back into place, and away the pair 
walked, across cedar-shadowed lawn, through the cool and dewy 
maze, to Arcadia. 


CHAPTER XXXyi. 

THE LAST OF ARCADIA! 

Never could the spot have justified its name more thoroughly 
than at this hour. 

The syringa bloom had fallen during the past week. No odor, 
save the intangible freshness of sea and moor, met the sense. 
There was not a wrinkle on the far Atlantic, not a cloud in the 
arch of sky. They chose a plot of grass for their breakfast-table, 
so small of dimensions, it was not possible to sit far apart. They 
had their platter of cake, their jug of milk in common. Surely no 
shepherd or shepherdess in real Arcadia was ever lighter of spirits 
than were these two ! 

“ I have learnt 4he taste of nectar,” said Geif, when the wedges 
of cake had vanished, when the milk-jug stood empty. “In re- 
payment of your hospitality, Miss Bartrand, I am going to bring 
a sharp accusation against you.” 

“ Which is ?” Marjorie asked, her blue eyes meeting his with 
steadiness. 

“ The nectar you give may perhaps be poisoned, an enchanted 
philtre taking the taste out of all one’s future life.” 

“ I should call that a cruel, an unjust accusation,” said the girl 
her cheeks ablaze. “Explain yourself! I don’t like a thing of 
this kind said, even in jest ” 

“ I was never farther from jesting. Poison is a harsh word, 
certainly; still — still,” broke off Geoffrey, with the abrupt cour- 
age of a shy wooer, “do you think a man could be as well con- 
tented with the grayness and plainness of English life after an 
hour spent here, in Arcadia, at your side ? ” 

Her face grew graver and graver. 

“ If you mean this for nonsense talk, Mr. Arbuthnot, you offend 
me. I do not care for flattery.” 

Marjorie Bartrand rose to her feet. As Geoffrey follow’ed her 
example, he took out his watch, then replaced it in his pocket 


266 


A GIETON GIRL. 


without noticing the hour. Both were a little pale; both had 
grown suddenly constrained. An unaccustomed mist made the 
familiar objects round her seem blurred in Marjorie’s sight. 

I must go back to the house,” she faltered. “The servants 
will have risen by this time. Of course one ought to feel tired, 
and to want rest.” 

She stooped, under pretence of picking up the platter and jug, 
in reality to hide her face from the man who loved her. But her 
fingers were unsteady. An instant more, jug and platter both 
were slipping from her grasp, when Geff, quick of eye and touch, 
caught them, and Marjorie’s hand as well. 

She did not say again that nonsense talk oifended her. 

‘ I should like you to understand one thing, Mr. Arbuthnot.” 
It was a good while later o: when she told Geoffrey this. Her 
slight hands rested unresistingly in his, the unmistakeable print 
of love confessed was on the faces of both. “ Perhaps what I am 
going to say will make you alter your opinion of me; it must be 
said, all the same. There shall be no Bluebeard secrets between 
us to come to light hereafter. There was a fortnight’s mistake 
in my life, once. I — I — the words seemed to i^corch her lips as 
they passed them, “have been engaged before.” 

“ So the voice of gossip told me, long ago, Miss Bartrand.” 

In an ii stant Marjorie rested her cheek, with a child’s rather 
than a woman’s gesture, against Geoffrey’s arm. 

“You ought not to say ‘ Miss Bartrand ’ now. From this day 
until death comes between us I must be ‘ Marjorie ’ to you.” 

“ Marjorie,” repeated Geff with quick obedience. “What con- 
cern of mine is it that you were engaged before you knew me ? I 
dare say I shall be an ogre of jealousy in the future. I cannot be 
jealous, retrospectively. The evil passion will date from this pres- 
ent hour, only.” 

But Marjorie insisted, whatever pain it cost her, on giving him 
the details of her first engagement, yes, even to the ring she ac- 
cepted, to the tears she shed over Jock, the setter puppy. And 
would Geoffrey have felt no conceiji, she asked him, with a flush, 
in conclusion, had things been different ? Could he have felt no 
retrospective jealousy if she had happened to care for Major Tre- 
dennis ? 

“ I like to think you did not care for him. I like supremely to 
know you care for me,” was Geoffrey’s answer. 


THE LAST OF ARCADIA. 


267 


** Because, of course, no human being can, honestly, love twice,” 
observed Marjorie Bartrand, with conviction. ‘‘It must be all or 
nothing. I wish you to know, although I was weak enough to 
be engaged to Major Tredennis and to take his presents, and to 
listen to his French songs, it was nothing. I could not look into 
your face as I am looking now, if I had cared the value of an old 
glove for him, or for any man.’’ 

“ No human being can, honestly, love twice.” So this was a 
fixed article in Marjorie Bartrand’s belief! The reflection gave 
Geoffrey pause. Of the beliefs fallacy, his own state of feeling 
was pertinent evidence. Four years ago he had loved Dinah 
Thurston with love as ardent as was ever lavished by man on 
woman. And now this wayward Southern child, with her terrible 
classics and worse Euclid — this child, with the deep, sweet eyes 
that promised so much for the future, and the chiselled sun- 
kissed hands, and the mouth, and the hair — had filled his heart 
to overflowing. 

A certain tacit disingeiiaoiisness seemed forced upon him. 
That prettily-told episode of her first engagement, of the Major’s 
French songs, his presents and his flatteries, was in absolute truth 
a challenge. But Geoffrey’s conscience smote him not as he let 
the challenge pass. His passion for Dinah was no “ fortnight’s 
mistake.” It was a part of himself. In losing her he got a 
wound that he must carry with him to the grave. He could no 
more have touched upon the theme, lightly, than he could have 
spoken lightly of his dead mother or of the childish prayers he 
used to repeat in the shelter of that mother’s arms. 

The girl he sought as his wife was exquisitely fresh and to be 
desired. Already, in a brief half hour, every hope of his future 
life seemed to have some silken thread of Marjorie woven in its 
fabric. She was unconnected with his past. The passion that 
had died, the regret that would never die, were his own. Their 
history was not to be told, save under dire necessity, of which the 
present rose-colored moment have no forewarning. 

“ I knew from the first that you had been engaged to Major 
Tredennis, and from the first,” Geoffrey Arbuthnot drew her 
towards him, tenderly, “ I began to fall in love with you.” 

“Not quite from the first?” Marjorie questioned, artfully 
ensuring a repetition of the honied truth. “ Not on that evening 
when you put me through my intellectual paces, when you tol4 


268 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


me that my classics — save the mark! — were stronger than m^ 
mathematics ? 

“ Yes, on that first evening. It was not because of your pretti- 
ness, only, or your grace. It was not, even, because you snubbed 
me so mercilessly. I don’t know why it was. It seemed that a 
new world had suddenly opened out before me. As I returned 
along the Gros Nez Cliffs, the Tintajeux roses and heliotropes in 
my hand, I felt like walking right above the mire and common- 
ness of my former life.” 

“ And your thoughts ? ” 

“ Were of Tintajeux, every yard of the road. Yes, I am clear 
about it,” said Geff, “ I began to fall in love from the first mo- 
ment that I saw your sweet Spanish face.” 

Marjorie shook her head at the compliment. Her looks were 
sceptical. 

Your manner, I confess, did not betray you, Mr. Arbuthnot,” 
she remarked dryly. 

“ Did you condescend to notice my manner ? ” Geff asked. 
‘‘ The whole of that evening, remember, except perhaps for a min- 
ute, when you had wounded yourself among the briars, you held 
me at arm’s length.” 

I thought you a married man, sir. But I liked — I respected 
you, brusque though you were, because I believed you had had the 
courage of your opinions, the strength of mind to marry Dinah. 
How strange,” she went on. dreamily abandoning herself to his 
caress — how strange it will be, when we are old people, to 
remember that our acquaintance began in such a comedy of 
mistakes.” 

Because he had had the strength of mind to marry Dinah ! The 
unconscious irony of her speech smote Geff Arbuthnot’s heart. 
He has been credited, then, as a virtue, with the fulfilment of 
that mad hope whose frustration took the keenest edge off his life 
the intoxication out of his youth! 

One builds up an ideal foolishly or wisely,” went on Marjorie’s 
happy voice, ‘‘ I had built up mine since I was eight years old. 
Well, when I heard of a Mr. Arbuthnot who was able enough to 
have taken high honors — good enough to give up his fame to 
others, brave enough to have married a girl beneath himself in 
class for the excellent reason that he loved her, when I heard these 
things— the personal histories of the Arbuthnot cousins cleverly 
mixed and transposed by poor Cassandra— I felt that my ideal was 


THE LAST OF ARCADIA. 269 

clothed with flesh and blood. What could I do but care a little 
for my new tutor ? ” 

Married though the tutor was ? ” 

That is beside the question. I was thinking of his fine quali- 
ties, only. I held out my hand to him in friendship before we 
met, even, and I — I know that I was never for one instant in love 
with Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot.” 

Marjorie Bartrand colored with slightly illogical vexation. 

“Are you quite sure that you are in love at all? ’’asked 
Geoffrey. 

For a few seconds an uncertain smile trembled round her lips. 
She drew back from him, half ignorant whether his question had 
been asked in earnest; then, lifting her eyes, Marjorie encountered 
the beseeching entreaty written on Geoffrey’s face. There came 
impulsive, over-quick submission. 

“ I mean to love you with my whole soul some day. Does not 
that content you ? Well, then, I mean — if you will give me 
breathing space — to love you now.” 

The midsummer morning was young, the blackbirds called aloud 
for joy in the Tintajeux orchards, and Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s age 
was twenty-four. Before they parted, ere Marjorie could repulse 
him or surrender, he caught the girl in a swift embrace; he kissed 
her reverently, passionately on the lips. 


CHAPTER XXXVIL 


A STONE FOB BREAD. 

The kiss cost him dear. A fledgling girl is not, finally, to he 
captured without a struggle, save by a master hand; and Geoffrey’s 
was the hand of a prentice. 

Marjorie’s heart leaped wdth novel tenderness at the contact of 
his lips. She suffered him to hold her in his arms. She watched 
him with shy pride, with a child’s delight in the new sense of 
ownership, as he walked away, along the accustomed path, from 
Tintajeux. Then, later, when she found herself in her own little 
white-draped realm, when, later still, she had slept and aw^akened 
and dressed herself for a fresh day, the current of feeling swerved. 
She shivered at realizing how absolutely her life had become en- 
tangled with his. She was assailed by reminiscences, all uncom- 
fortable ones, of Major Tredennis. She was sensible of a longing, 
that had almost passion in it, for the liberty she had been betrayed 
into relinquishing. 

“I mean, if you will give me breathing-space, to love you now,” 
Here, surely, was what she needed — time for becoming used to 
the new phenomenon of a lover. 

During the past fortnight, Geoffrey had filled every thought of 
her waking hours; a haunting sense of his nearness had touched 
her dreams. At this point she had fain stood still — six months— 
a year tacitly engaged, if need be, but on the same fraternal 
footing as wdien they walked together yesterday among the 
Langrune cornfields. Why hurry into commonplace ? The^ Bar- 
trands were not a kissing race. Geff ought to have divined their 
likes and dislikes, thought the poor child reasonlessly. And yet, 
pleaded another voice in this conscience of seventeen, the kiss was 
sweet! It seemed that she had become, suddenly and distinctly, 
two persons — one a girl weakly contented, as our grandmothers 
used to be, at the prospect of husband and home and fireside; 
the other, a strong-headed, Minerva-like young woman coolly 
criticising the question of love and marriage from a vantage 


A STONE FOR BREAD, 


271 


ground, and liking it ill. Which of the two — she asked herself 
this pretty often throughout the sunny tedium of the long day— 
which was the real, which the artificial Marjorie Bartrand ? 

It had been settled between them that Geoffrey should walk out 
to Tintajeux before the Seigneur’s supper-hour that evening. 
When the time came, when Geff approached the Manoir, treading 
lightly, as befits a man whose heart wells over with hope, he found 
the friendly schoolroom window bolted. No youthful flitting 
figure was to be seen among the growing shadows of the garden; 
Arcadia was empty. Andros Bartrand, leisurely pacing, a cigar 
between his lips, his terriers at his heels, possessed the lawn. 

With a dim sensation of chill Geoffrey rang at the front door, 
and was ushered in by Sylvestre, a whole levei^e rideau in the 
old butler’s expressive Norman smile, to the drawing-room. 
Here Marjorie, mutinous of spirit, but with a tenderly blushing 
face, awaited him. The western lights filtered through the half- 
closed Venetians. Above the cedar shade gleamed as unstained a 
sweep of Atlantic as on the first evening that Geoffrey visited 
Tintajeux. The Petit Trianon baskets were filled with glorious 
Hues de Bohan. The Cupids were hurling rose leaves at the 
guillotine. The miniature Bartrands, imperturbable as becomes 
mortals who have proved the nothingness of love as of life, seemed 
to glance with rather more philosophic amiability than usual from 
their frames. 

Well, all that Geoffrey saw or thought of was Marjorie. She 
looked prettier than he had ever seen her look, as she moved 
forward to greet him — softer, more womanly. For the girl, 
while she chafed, in imagination, under her new yoke, had spent 
a good hour before her glass ere her lover came. She had put 
on her one white dress of regulation length, had clasped an old- 
fashioned Spanish necklace round her throat, had pinned a little 
bnnch of heliotrope and sweetbriar, mindful of the morning’s 
dominant odors, in her breast. 

A sense of his immense good fortune in having wonher, filled. 
Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s heart. He took both her hands, looking 
down at their slender carving, with the connoisseurship of posses- 
sion. He raised them within an inch of his lips. 

I hope, Mr. Arbuthnot, you will pardon me for receiving you 
here ? ” Marjorie asked him this with forced composure. “ But 
I thought — 1 was not sure whether we were to read to-night or 
not.’* 


272 


A GIRT ON GIRL. 


Geoffrey Arbuthnot involuntarily drew back. The glance 
which met him from his new sweetheart’s eyes was, he felt, cold. 
During an instant’s space, mastered by one of those shadowy 
infidelities of which we repent ere they take substance, Geff 
bethought him of eyes that never could look cold, in happiness 
or in trouble — English-colored eyes from which, perhaps, the fire, 
the mind of Marjorie’s sapphii*e glance, were wanting. 

“I thought,” she went on, with almost defiant ease, that after 
yesterday’s idleness, our reading to-night must be a sham, so it 
would be unnecessary to see you in the schoolroom.” 

can guess what that means,” said Geoffrey, without letting 
loose her hands. “ You have no work ready for me.” 

“ I have done sgme Yirgil, fuller, I know, of faults than ever, 
but I thought, for one evening, sir, we might let Greek and 
Latin go.” 

“ Why not let them go forever — as things that have had their 
use! ” cried Geoffrey Arbuthnot. 

‘‘ As things that have had their use ? Are you speaking of my 
classics ? You who told me, a fortnight ago, I might come out 
in the third class of a Tripos ? ” 

‘‘ A fortnight ago is not to-day.” 

Your good opinion has had time to cool ? Pray be frank, Mr. 
Arbuthnot.” It was in her mood to quarrel — at least to reach 
the brink of a quarrel with him, if ’twere only for sweet re- 
lenting’ s sake. ‘‘ 1 don’t one bit come up to your ideal of a model 
woman ? ” 

‘‘1 abhor models, irrespective of their sex. Marjorie, why 
are we talking in this strain?” And now her fingers reached 
his lips. “ I want you to be like nothing, to be notliing, but 
yourself.” 

And I, myself, shall never alter. I may be too dull-witted to 
pass the entrance examination for Girton. That will be my mis- 
fortune. I shall always be athirst for knowing things, for seeing 
life — on its seamy side, especially — with my own eyes, for getting 
to the real worst of everything! And I shall always,” added 
Marjorie, with a look that indubitably had in it the nature of a 
challenge, “ retain my Bartrand temper.” 

“ I have a temper also,” answered Geff, drawing her a little 
closer to him. ‘‘Do not omit that item from our prospects of 
future joy. You are passionate. I am unforgetting. Stormy 
elements these to be brought into daily, hourly contact under the 
same roof.” 


A STONE FOE BREAD. 


273 

“ And has your ideal of life always been one of conflict ? ” asked 
Marjorie. 

At the domestic picture, quietly touched in by Geoffrey, the 
lines of her lips had softened against her will. 

“I have had no experience save in conflict,” answered Geff 
Arbuthnot, with truth. 

“ When you were a really young man, four or five years ago, did 
you look forward to the Taming of a Shrew as a likely sequel to 
your term of happy bachelorhood ? ” 

The question was jestingly meant, lightly spoken. But Geof- 
frey’s dark cheek changed hue. 

Oh, if I have said anything indiscreet, forgive me.” Marjorie 
watched him with attention. “You must grow used, remember, 
to the faults of my fine qualities. One of these is^quisitiveness. 
It would delight me to know, precisely, what you used to think 
and feel when you were twenty years old. I suppose you were 
not so preteriiaturally wise, always, as you are now ? ” 

“ I have never been wise at any period of my life,’’ said Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot. 

“ But when you were nineteen, say, what did you think, what 
did you hope, what did you look forward to ? ” 

“ What I hoped, what I looked forward to, was — madness.” 
The unguarded answered broke from him instantly. “ If you would 
be kind to me, Marjorie,” he added, “ let the past rest. There is 
enough, a great deal more than enough to be grateful for in the 
present.” 

Marjorie, on this, drew herself to her full height. She looked 
at him with the instinct of a child who would unriddle a secret 
by his own close reading of another’s face. She freed her hands 
promptly from his clasp, 

“ What you hoped, what you looked forward to was — madness I 
Do you mean in regard of University laurels ?” 

“ We are not talking of University laurels. We are talking,” 
said Geoffrey, “ of the happiness beyond happiness, the compan- 
ionship for life of two human souls that suit each other.” 

“And your hopes of these things,” her lips whitened as she 
repeated the words, “were madness? Singular contradiction! 
You have told me that yours has been a sec.’uded student’s life, 
that, until a fortnight ago, you never cared for any society but 
that of men ? ” 

“ Whatever I have told you has beoji true,” said Geff, with firm- 


274 


A GIB TON GIRL. 


ness. Then, instantly relenting, “ Do not let us have a quarrel,’’ 
he pleaded, ‘‘ on this first day that we are sweethearts.” 

She turned from him, indignant, breathless. 

‘If we quarrel over realities, Mr. Arbuthnot, the pity is we did 
not look realities in the face before becoming sweethearts.” 

“ Miss Bartrand — Marjorie! ” 

“Oh, I am thoroughly in earnest. This morning, when first I 
knew you cared for me a little, I was open with you. I told you 
what had to be said about Major Tredennis, and you forgave me. 
Bluebeard secrets, bad always, must be doubly so between people 
who mean to spend their lives together. I told you of my miser- 
able weakness — ” 

Her frank girlish face burned so hotly that Geff came to her 
relief. 

“ You were very open with me, Marjorie, true and straightfor- 
ward, as it is your nature to be.” 

“ 1 did not hide from you, whatever the shame of it, that I had 
bound myself once before.” 

Geoifrey was no social diplomatist. He might, otherwise, with 
mournful veracity, have retoided that he had been a free man 
always. But the statement would have implied a prevarication, 
and it was not in Geoffrey Arbuthnot’ s upright soul to prevar- 
icate. 

“You told me you had been engaged. You also gave an opinion 
as to its being impossible for people, honestly, lo love twice.” 

“ Most certainly I did. I never cared more for Major Tredennis 
than I do for this flower I wear — ask Mrs. Arbuthnot ! I found 
courage yesterday to talk to her about that wretched time — and I 
cfo care for you,” looking straight from her heart at her lover. 
“ And it is utterly impossible for any woman or any man to love 
twice.” 

“ You think so I ought to have disagreed with you at once,” 
struck in Geff with courage. ought to have toid you this 
what I hold to be truth, ” 

“ And this is ? ” 

“ That women and men may love a second time honestly, al- 
though once, only, with success.” 

She turned away doubtfully, with lowered lids, hesitating a few 
moments. Then: “Love twice? and why not love three, four, 
five times ? ” she questioned, glancing up at him with eyes that 
glowed. “ Why hold at all hy constancy, or honor or good faith ? 
What mystic limitation is there in the number two ? ” 


A STONE FOB BBEAB, 


21b 


“A woman troubled is Heaven’s fairest work spoiled.” 

Geoffrey believed as devoutly as do most men in the aphorism. 
But Marjorie was not a woman, he remembered, only an impetu- 
ous girl, with Southern blood in her veins, with the Bartrand 
pride on her lips, with all sweet and modest and maidenly super- 
stitions in her heart. 

He felt that he had never loved her more dearly than in this 
very outburst of unreasoning childish wrath against himself. 

“ I know nothing about three, four, or five times. You per- 
sisted, recollect, in making me talk of an uninteresting subject, 
my own past life, and ” 

‘‘And am I to think — are you putting me to the humiliation, 
now too late,” she exclaimed, the thought of his kiss returning to 
her, “the humiliation of feeling, here, under my grandfather’s 
roof, that I am offered your love at second-hand ? ” 

A few seconds ago Geoffrey’s impulse had been to take her in 
his arms, to forgive her in spite of her injustice! But her tone 
her changed. It was hard, suspicious. It bespoke pride not only 
of race but of money. All the inherited baser possibilities of her 
nature had, under the moment’s white anger, gained the ascen- 
dency in poor Marjorie’s breast. 

Geff was sensible of them and recoiled. For the first time to- 
day, it occurred to him that the girl he sought to marry was not 
only a Bartrand but an heiress, his superior in position as in purse. 

“I don’t like to hear you say ‘humiliation.’ Such love as I 
feel for you,” confessed Geoffrey Arbuthnot, nobly and simply. 
“ could humiliate no woman.” 

“And if it comes at second-hand, if someone else before my 
time has appraised its value, and flung it aside ? ” 

“ Miss Bartrand, you must explain to me what you mean by 
that question.” 

“ I mean,” flamed forth Marjorie, her whole hot soul throbbing 
in her voice, “ that I must be first — first, Mr. Arbuthnot, in the 
heart of the man I marry.” 

“ Would you not be first in mine ? ” 

“ I should give him all. I could accept nothing short of all in 
return. If, afterwards, I found that I had been deceived — you 
understand me, if I knew that I had been chosen from other mo- 
tives than love — I should make his life and my ownmost miser- 
able 1 ” 

And, indeed, the fire of her voice and face gave to the prophecy 
only too much an air of certitude. 


276 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


Geoffrey Arbuthnot walked to a neighboring window. Push^ 
ing back the half-closed shutters he saw before him a wide ex- 
panse of the Manoir gardens; through an arch of cedar boughs he 
caught a goodly vista of fields and orchards beyond. And all 
that he looked upon would one day be Marjorie’s ! With crush- 
ing force came the conviction that he had fallen into a desperate 
error, had walked blindfolded, a second time, into a Fool’s Paradise. 
Marjorie Bartrand’s youth, the intimacy into which they had been 
thrown, his own absolute want ot premeditation might be excused. 
The facts vvei-e there, looking, as disagreeable facts have a knack of 
doing, with transparent clearness in his face. He had walked into 
a Fool’s Paradise. To accept the position, give Marjorie Bartrand 
back her freedom, unconditionally, were the moment’s immediate 
and exceeding bitter duties. The wilful, passionate child of seven- 
teen, — conquered at one moment, at the next resisting — repented 
her, already, of her bargain. Let that bargain be cancelled. 

“ Your life shall never become miserable through fault of mine, 
Miss Bartrand.” Turning round, Geff looked at her gravely. 
“ Pardon me whatever foolish words I spoke this morning. In a 
week or two forget my existence! You are bound to me by no 
promise ” 

‘^And it costs you nothing to give me up? You can talk of 
forgetting, in this airy fashion ? • ’ interrupted Marjorie with 
vehement recollection of her own surrender. ‘‘ Then you never 
sought me from liking. I have had a second experience of the 
same cruel story. The acres of Tintajeux, few though they be, 
are matters, it seems, better worth caring for than Marjorie 
Bartrand herself.’^ 

From her cradle to her grave it would be safe to aver that 
speech so ignoble never issued from Marjorie Bartr and’s lips 
She recognized its meanness before the last word was spoken. 
Her cheeks crimsoned. She could have flung herself at the feet 
of the lover her suspicion had dishonored. 

“ I was wrong . . . forgive me for speaking like this,” she be- 
gan to stammer brokenly. 

But Geoffrey Arbuthnot could not condone a paltry accusation, 
even from her. With two steps he reached the girl’s chair. He 
stood before her, pale and strongly moved. She hardly recognized 
the expression of his face. 

And so you think that I, with the full use of my muscles and 
brain, sought to marry you for money’s sake, the poor little 
handful of money that goes with Tintajeux Manoir. The slight to 


A STONE FOB BREAD. 277 

my intelligence is severe. Had I been a fortune-hunter, Miss 
Bartrand, 1 should have gone for a larger stake.?’ 

“ Then why did you look at me ? Why did you not let me go 
my way?” She clasped her hands together, piteously. “For 
you have never loved me. You confessed as much just now ? ” 

“ Did I ? I can only remember a confession in which I spoke 
the truth — a confession you believed this morning,” added Geof- 
frey, with such steadiness as he could muster. 

“ All this is waste of time,” she said, with a miserable little 
laugh. “ We have the habit of plain speaking — you and I. Let 
us keep it up to the last. Your heart is not your own, Mr. 
Arbuthnot. You have liked some other person better than you 
like me. Have liked, did I say ? You like her, I have not a 
doubt, to this day.” 

“This day when I have asked you, wisely or unwisely, to be 
my wife ? ” 

“If your eonscience were clear you could not trifle with me 
like this. You would say Xo, or Yes.” 

And, thus urged, Geoffrey Arbuthnot said “ Yes” — with unmiti- 
gated frankness, without a hint either at penitence or remorse. 
Long ago, in his undergraduate days — thus the confession ran — 
he had fallen in love . . . possibly as men do not fall in love, 
twice, during their lives! He was rough, plain, a student as 
Marjorie saw him now, no suitor to win a young girl’s fancy. And 
so 

“And so,” broke in Marjorie with trembling lips, “she was 
false to you ? ” 

“ She was neither false nor true,” he answered ; “ I had no place 
at all in her heart. My own best friend ” — and here Geff’s voice 
sank, each word of his avowal seemed wrung from him with pain 
— “became, unconsciously, my rival.” 

“Your best friend,” stammered Marjorie, upon whom a first 
j j flicker of light was beginning to dawn. 

■j “ Best then, and I hope forever — just as she whom he married 
will, I know, be ray ideal of all sweet and womanly qualities till 
' I die. Although I lost her,” exclaimed Geff Arbuthnot, “ I owe 
j her everything! It is using a commonplace to say that I would at 
any hour start to the other side of the world, if by so starting I 
: could confer on her the smallest service. But it is the truth.” 

J He was a man, ordinarily, of demeanor so reticent, of emotions 
: so controlled, that this little outburst struck on Marjorie Bartrand 
I with double force. Alas ! there could not be room for another 


278 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


instant’s doubt. She recalled the morning when she had lectured 
her tutor on his friyolity, she remembered his embarrassment when 
she spoke of Dinah as his wife — his absence of mind, his pallor. 
The story of his past life was laid open, a clear page for her to 
read. The confession of her engagement to Major Tredennis 
had met with an over full equivalent. 

‘‘At last, then,” she murmured, “I have got to the truth of 
things. It might have been juster if I had not been deceived so 
long.” 

“Will you hear me out to the end?” There was a ring of 
command rather than of pleading in Geoffrey’s tone. “ Four 
years ago it was my fate, I can never say my misfortune, to come 
across a girl whom it was madness for me to love. I lost. 1 
suffered. But many a man has met with a like overthrow, and 
got firmly to his feet in time. I am very firm on my feet,” said 
Geff Arbuthnot. • “I have grown young again in knowing you. 
If you had chosen to become my wife I could have loved you 
well. Yes I do love you — too well ! now, when it- seems we are 
like bidding good-bye forever.” 

And Geoffrey rested his hands for an instant upon the girl’s 
graceful down-bent head. 

“And the dream is over — over.” She repeated the words 
huskily, not so much thinking of Geff, as seeking to bring home 
to herself the extremity of her own pain. ‘MVe are to be 
nothing to each other from this hour forth, not even friends.” 

Geoffrey Arbuthnot walked a few steps away. The movement 
was prompted by a definite and conscious weakness. This saying 
good-bye forever was no easy thing, he found, so long as his 
hand rested upon the silken hair, so long as the slender figure 
palpitated close to him, the heliotrope sent its odor to his brain 
from Marjorie’s breast. 

“ The dream is over, because you discovered it to be a dream. 
You must acknowledge. Miss Bartrand, that you have taken the 
matter wholly out of my keeping.” 

“ We might see each other, as friends,” she stammered — true 
to a time-worn instinct of her sex, offering a stone for bread, 
friendship to the man she loved, and who loved her. “ Surely, 
our work need not be dropped because of this ? As long as you 
stay in the island, you will come out to read with me at 
Tintajeux ? ” 

“I shall return to Tintajeux, once more after to-night,” was 


A STONE FOR BREAD. 


279 


Geff ^rbuthnot’s answer. “ I shall return to shake hands with 
t ie Seigneur, and to be paid my money. Good-bye forever are 
}.ard words to speak,” he went on. “ But we shall not make them 
r.asier by trying to shirk them. We have, virtually, said good-bye 
. Iready.” 

“ And we are never to be nearer reconciliation than this ? You 
re not a man to change ? 

There came a furtive play of feeling upon her mouth. Deep 
in her heart lurked a formless hope that Geoffrey was not m 
earnest, that at a smile, a touch of hers, he must» yield, if she so 
willed it. 

I am a man,’’ he answered, to change upon the day you bid 
me do so. If, at some futm*e time, you think less vile things of 
me ” 

“Mr. Arbuthnot !” 

“ Well, or without that. If it should be your whim, in some 
idle hour, to remember my existence — dare 1 say, to send me a 
flower you have worn, a bit of ribbon, a sheet of paper with a 
single relenting word written on it — you will have only to address 
your envelope to St. John’s, Cambridge.” 

“ And now, for the remainder of this summer?” asked Mar- 
jorie, drear visions, rising before her of a silent schoolroom, of 
work labored through without the poignant desire of Geoffrey’s 
praise. “ Is it possible that you mean— that you have no other 
course than to leave Guernsey at once ? ” 

Something in her manner made it seem that she referred their 
quarrel to him for final arbitration. But Gcff Arbuthnot tried 
his utmost to congeal. His present temper indisposed him for 
compromise. He had been cut to the quick by that one scornful 
imputation, that one base utterance of Marjorie’s lips — “ The 
acres of Tintajeux, few though they be, are matters better w^orth 
caring for than Marjorie Bartrand herself.” 

He felt it impossible to forgive her. 

“ I shall certainly not leave Guernsey without calling on the 
Seigneur — to be paid.” 

Geoffrey was not superior to a feeling of pleasure in the repeti- 
tion of these w^ords. They were hoiribly cruel ones. It might 
well be, afterwards, that he remembered wdth remorse how the 
girl’s slender figure drooped, how her cheeks burned, how her 
hands fell listlessly upon her knee, one in the other’s palm. 

“And then, for the rest of the vacation what are your plans ?” 
she repeated, presently. 

“I have no plans, now. The summer has gone out of my 
year! Maybe I shall follow in the footsteps of Gaston and his 
wife. Dinah, I know, would not be sorry to leave this place.” 

He spoke without premeditation : It had, perhaps, not occurred 
to Geff Arbuthnot’s coarser masculine perception, that his 
meagre outline of the past had revealed a secret of w^hich Dinah 
was, herself, ignorant. To Marjorie, in her despair, the mention 
of Dinah’s name w^as a last blow^ the heavier, perhaps in that 
Geoffrey gave it with such calmness, was prepared as a matter of 


280 


A GIRTON GIRL. 

course, to fall bade on the friendship of the fair and gentle 
woman to whom, although she had never loved him, he ‘‘owed 
everything.” 

Or I may cross at once to England. That is the likeliest. In 
England, one can always fall back on work. I have had enough 
of idleness. A boat calls here on Sunday morning that would 
suit me well enough.” 

“ On Saturday, then, grandpapa and I will look f r your visit. 
Could you not,” suggested Marjorie, with magnanimity, ask 
Mr. and Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot to come with you to Tintajeux ? ” 

Geoffrey had a moment’s hesitation. There was a note in her 
fresh and youthful voice which he had never before distinguished, 
and whicli, I think, wrung his lieart. But he would not allow 
himself to soften. He would not forgive her until she repented 
her of the thing which she had uttered. 

“ Gaston has not returned. Miss Bartrand. There are heavy 
fog banks still at sea. The Cherburg boat was not signalled when 
I left town, and Dinah — well, Dinah, of course, will be miserable 
until she sees her husband’s face.” 

Geff took up his hat in readiness for departure, and Marjorie 
rose from her chair. 

‘‘ The Cherburg boat will be back before Saturday, but, in any 
case, grandpapa and I will count upon seeing you. Good-night, 
Mr. Arbuthnot. This is not your last visit to Tintajeux. I do 
not acknowledge that we are saying good-bye forever.” She 
kept herself under singular control. For a second or two she 
yielded her cold hand, bravely into GefE’s keeping. As he left 
the drawing-room she accorded him a lofty minuet de la cour 
courtesy, learnt, in her babyhood, from her first French governess. 
Then when he was gone, wlien the figure she had watched so 
often had rounded the last turning on the Tintajeux avenue, the 
poor child, with leaden steps, made her way to the schoolroom. 
Sinking in her place beside the ink-stained table, Marjorie Bar- 
trand rested her face upon a heap of books, then burst into a very 
thunder-shower of tears. 

Her scene wdth Geoffrey had swept away all sense of the dual 
personality that troubled her before his coming. The strong- 
minded Minerva, criticising love and marriage with acerbity had 
vanished, and in her place was a commonplace little girl sobbing 
her heart out, as Kosie Yerschoyle, as Ada de Carterat might 
have done, for the sweetheart her own unruly tongue had 
estranged. 

If Geoffrey would but come back, take her in his arms, kiss 
and forgive her! So, dumbly, cried Marjorie’s heart. 

But supper-time came and went. The sun dipped under the 
fading sea line, the twilight waned, the yellow stars stole forth, 
one by one, from the gray: Geoffrey Arbuthnot returned not. 

She had acted with family pride, perhaps from virtue, con- 
ceivably from jealousy, without doubt, as became a Bartrand. 
These cold consolations were all that the universe, just at present, 
seemed likely to offer. 


CHAPTER XXXYIIL 


TEMPTATION. 

When the Cherbourg boat reached Guernsey, twenty-four 
hours behind her time, no Dinah, with radiant expectant face, 
waited on the quay to bid Gaston Arbuthnot good-morning. 

It was the first occasion since their marriage that she had in 
like manner failed. After ever so short a separation it was 
Dinah’s habit to go bravely to the fore on harbor side or platform 
with a welcome for the husband she loved. No Dinah was to be 
seen this morning. And Gaston Arbuthnot’s spirit sat more 
lightly on its throne by reason of her absence. 

He was honestly glad to return. A day and a night’s detention 
on a rock, with a thick sea fog, and without one’s dressing-case, 
was a test of sentiment and of triendship alike, which Gaston 
had felt to be beyond his strength. But it was a relief to him 
that poor Dinah, effusive, reproachful,— Dinah, half sunshine, half 
tears — should not be on the pier to enact a little scene of domestic 
interest beneath the sharp, iincomprehending eyes of Linda 
Thorne. 

“Useless to ask you to breakfast with us,” murmured that lady, 
from beneath her treble gauze mask, as she and Gaston were pass- 
ing across the gangway. ‘‘ Dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, T am sure, will 
be in a fever of anxiety about your return.” 

“Scarcely. Everyone in Guernsey must have known that fog 
detained us. If you wih be at home this afternoon,” Gaston 
added, when their hands met at parting, “ I will give you the 
latest bulletin as to Dinah’s condition.” 

“ Oh, I make no promises,” cried Linda, carelessly. “ ‘ He who 
will not when he may ’ — you know the rest of the proverb. 
Long before five o’clock to-day some tragic event may have 
changed us ” — in after times this prophecy, made in jest, might 
possibly return to Linda Thorne’s memory — “ changed us forever 
into enemies. Robbie, love, accept my arm. As you are quite 


282 


4 GIRT ON GIRL. 


deteimined that two shillings’ worth of cab would bring us to 
bankruptcy, we will return to our home and infant on foot.” 

Doctor and Mrs. Thorne turned, on leaving the quay, into a 
narrow street, leading towards the Old Town and The Bungalow. 
Gaston Arbuthnot, with the light-heartedness born of recovered 
freedom, ran quickly up the hundred-and-eighty steps that formed 
the shortest cut from the pier road to Miller’s Hotel. At the sum- 
mit of these steps a new temptation assailed him in the person of 
old Colonel de Gourmet, the bachelor proprietor of the most 
luxurious little house, the best cellar, and the best cook in the 
Channel Archipelago. 

“Why, Arbuthnot I Some one told me you were at the bottom 
of the sea. You and Linda Thorne. Locksley Hall sort of 
thing ! So goes the story of the moment. You are the very man 
I could have wished to meet, sir. Come back to breakfast with 
me. I have two of the finest mullet ever caught in this Channel, 
and Kutscheel, my black fellow, could dress a mullet with Brillat 
Savarin himself. Xow, ’111 hear of no refusal.” 

I have a wife. Colonel. The argument, naturally, does not 
carry weight with you. Still it is an argument ; I have a wife, 
and she expects me.” 

“ Send up a line from my house, telling Mrs. Arbuthnot where 
you are. I positively would not waste such fish on a man of less 
cultivated taste.” In the Colonel’s lack-lustre eye there came a 
momentary glow of feeling. “ In my time, we used to look upon 
a palate — a palate, sir, as one of the essentials of a gentleman. 
The young men now-a-days don’t know a mullet from a stickle-, 
back.” 

Well, Reader, a dual breakfast with old de Gourmet was a 
temptation, after its sort, that Gaston Arbuthnot ranked high. 
The Colonel’s admirably arranged house was screened by just 
sufficient leafy shadow from the eastern sun, refreshed by just 
sufficient air on the side where it opened to the sea. The 
Colonel’s black fellow was a finished artist ; his cellar, the long 
result of half a lifetime. To Gaston, — a true Parisian in all the 
more important business of existence — a noontide breakfast was 
the crowning meal of the day. Man dines, he w^ould contend, as 
dogs or horses feed, because his body needs replenishment. 
Breakfast, with its delicate light dishes, fine wine, fruits and 
coffee, — breakfast, succeeded by a prime cigar, morning sunshine, 
and morning talk — is, essentially, a refined, a human repast. The 


TEMPTATIQ]^, 


283 


nine o’clock tea and toast, the marmalade, bloaters, or bacon, 
sacred to the British householder, were scarcely less horrible to 
him than the buckwheat cakes and maple syrup, the porridge, the 
pie, the “shad” of American breakfast-tables. 

“ If you can give me half an hour’s law, Colonel de Gourmet, 
time to have a bath, to get a change of apparel, and hear my 
wife’s version of the Locksley Hall episode, I will come to you. 
Otherwise, I know the nature of mullet, and ” 

“ I appreciate your delicacy, my dear sir. But my black fellow 
and I thoroughly understand each other. Those mullet,” said the 
Colonel, wtth a quiver of the lips, “ are now reposing, each in his 
paper shroud, buttered, flavored to a nicety. They will not ap- 
proach the fire until Kutscheel sees me turn yonder corner beneath 
the Arsenal gates. I will wait for you here — putting the last 
finishing touch, alas! to a poorish appetite — as I limp up and 
down in the shade. But don’t exceed thirty-five minutes. We 
owe it to our cook, a human being with passions and weaknesses 
like unto our own, to have a conscience in these matters.” 

A minute or two later Gaston’s alert step had brought him to 
the outer gate of Miller’s Hotel. He loitered for a few seconds in 
the garden, enjoying its double sensation of warmth and flower 
scents. Then, with hesitation for which he would have found 
it hard to account, Gaston Arbuthnot entered the house. He 
traversed a passage, and opened the door of Dinah’s sitting-room. 

It was empty. Her work-frame was shrouded in silver paper. 
A bouquet of hot-house flowers lay, u ith petals browned and 
faded, on the table, a card of Lord Rex Basire’s beside them. 
Gaston felt that the room had not been lived in since they left it 
last on Wednesday morning. 

“ Madame had gone out,” volunteered the black-eyed French 
waitress, peeping in at him through the half-open door, the black- 
eyed waitress building up dramatic likelihoods on the spot, possi- 
bly from the recollection of Madame’s tears of yesterday; possibly 
from Milor’s neglected bouquet on the table; possibly from a cer- 
tain blank look on Arbuthnot’s face. “Madame had gone out — 
there was a good hour at least. Madame had left no message for 
Monsieur.” 

For the first time since their marriage! thought Gaston Arbuth- 
not, not without a pang, as he walked off in silence to his 
dressing-room. 

Well, there must be a first time, he supposed, in all one’s dis- 


284 


A GIETON GIBL, 


illusionments. From to-day forth, he need never more expect a 
passionate greeting, perhaps never dread a passionate reproach 
from Dinah. And it was best so. Gaston had seen Clesinger’s 
rival statues of Rachel; one, the “ PliMre,” the other, “ Lesbia 
with ]ier Sparrow.” He infinitely preferred the Lesbia, sparrow, 
silliness, and all. Still, mused Mr. Arbuthnot, whose emotions 
had a trick of mounting quickly from the heart to the head, it 
might be a little stroke of wise and kindly diplomacy for him to 
exhibit discerning mortification, ake Dinah feel that she had 
been forgetful of him. Forgetful, for the first time, surely, since 
that morning in the rustic Cambridgeshire church when she 
v^alked down the aisle, in her white straw bonnet, her simple 
cambric gown — his wife. 

Accordingly, when he re-entered their sitting-room presently — 
Dinah absent still — Mr. Arbuthnot pencilled the following note, 
curtly amative, as was ever one of Captain Steele’s to his Prue ! 

“ My dearest Girl, 

“ My existence, I perceive, has slipped your memory. But I 
do exist. I am, at this moment, going out to breakfast — not in 
high spirits. 

“Your devoted. 

“ G. A.” 

Gaston Arbuthnot pencilled this note. Then, with affections, 
it must be confessed, undividedly centred on red mullet, he started 
off, lightsome of mien, elastic of step, in the direction of Colonel 
de Gourmet’s house. At the first turning of the road a girl with 
golden hair, with a face fair, despite its pallor, as the summer 
morning, stood opposite to him — Dinah. A basket of strawberries 
hung on Mrs. Arbuthnot's arm, a bunch of white moss roses, her 
husband’s favorite flower, was between her hands. 

“Dinah, my love, this is fortunate. I have been hunting 
everywhere for you,” said Gaston, hitting without effort upon one 
of those airy little nothings which float men of his weight, like 
corks, over half the whirlpools of life. 

“ I am glad, in spite of all that has happened, to see you back.” 

And Dinah, who had never mttered an airy nothing since she 
was born, looked hard at him. Traces, unmistakeable, of tear- 
shedding gave an expression Gaston Arbuthnot liked not to her 
eyes. 


TEMPTATION. 


285 


‘‘Yet you did not show your gladness by meeting me on the 
pier — grim and dirty objects we must all have been after our 
twenty-four hours’ discomfort! Perhaps I deserved to be neg- 
lected,” said Gaston, in a tone of resignation. “ But remember, 
darling, I am not accustomed to miss your face when I have been 
away. The punishment, coming immediately after a course of 
Alderney and fog, struck me as rough.” 

“ Don’t talk of punishment,’* Dinah answered, her voice 
betraying the strong effort by which she kept it controlled. 
“Your staying away has been hard to bear . . . and now, 

now I wish to forget everything but that you are back safe.” 

“ And what did you do with your :ime, yesterday ? Of course 
you were not anxious. You knew that fog, and fog alone, was 
keeping me in Alderney.” 

“ Yesterday was the blackest day I have ever lived through.” 

And Dinah lifted her face, courting rather than turning from 
her husband’s scrutiny. 

“ Blackest ? Why, I thought you had had sunshine in Guern- 
sey, that the fog concentrated itself with vile partiality upon our 
horrible rock yonder! And what did you do with your time, 
then ? ” went on Gaston, with unabated cheerfulness. “ Where 
was Geoffrey ? ” 

“ I did not think of Geoffrey. I had heart for nothing but to 
stay in my own room.” 

“ Substituting tea for dinner, close air for oxygen, as Woman 
loves to do when she is in trouble — or has manufactured trouble 
for herself. And had you no visitors at all, to lighten your 
darkness ? ” 

“ Lord Kex Basire seems to have called. His card was lying 
this morning on the parlor table.” 

“ And you have no wider sympathies, Dinah, no desire to know 
how we, miserable deserters, got along in Alderney ? ” 

“ I like, of course, to hear everything that concerns you.” 

Dinah accentuated the pronoun stoutly. 

“Altliough you had not sufficient curiosity to meet me when 
I landed ? ” 

As Gaston thus adroitly harked back upon his grievance his 
wife’s eyes sank. She turned from him with a movement of 
impatience. 

“ The moment the steamer was signalled I got ready, Gaston. 
I went straight down to the pier road and watched her come into 


286 


A giuton girl. 


harbor. Oh, you never saw me,’’ Dinah added quickly. I was 
standing behind some piles of timber at the entrance to the pier, 
a hundred yards distant. And when I saw you and the Thornes 
land together, I felt certain you would walk with them to their 
house, and I lost courage and got away.” 

‘‘ To avoid the deadly risk of saying good-morning to Mrs 
Thorne and the Doctor ? ” 

“ I — I remembered there were no strawberries for break f^ st,” 
she stammered, determined upon not giving him fresh offence, 
“ no roses to last us until to-morrow. Don’t you see,” holding 
out her bands, which trembled a little, “ I have been marketing ?” 

“ Alone ? But I need hardly ask the question. You always 
do your marketing alone.” 

His skilfully marshalled questions perplexed her vaguely. She 
felt the same aching doubt which overcame her, once, on board 
the Princess, a doubt as to Gaston’s belief in her perfect truthful- 
ness. 

‘‘ Yes, and no,” she answered, a piteous deprecation in her tone. 
“ Lord Kex Basire was in the market-place. His company was so 
wearisome that I could scarcely answer a civil word. Yet he 
followed me from stall to stall. A lord it seems will not be 
affronted as a gentleman would. I never shook him off till I 
turned the corner beneath the Arsenal gates.” 

‘‘ From which point Lord Kex, no doubt caught a glimpse of 
me,” said Gaston witli his unfathomable candor. ’Tis a good 
enough little creature in its way, although brainless ! We must 
be tolerant of all men, Dinah. If one only frequented the society 
one loves best,” he pursued, I should certainly not be going out 
to breakfast at this moment.” 

“ Going out! ” 

“ I saw de Gourmet at the bottom of the hill, and he invited 
me to eat red mullet with him thirty-five minutes later. You 
must admit, Dinah, that the temptation was strong ? ” 

To this she made no answer. 

“ For when de Gourmet talks of red mullet he implies a menu, 
(Our food in Alderney was barbarous.) Rougets en papillottes, 
accompanied by five old graves. Tartines de caviar. Poulet 
saute — with Chateau Margaux, of ’58. A souffle aux f raises. A 
glass of wonderful Tokai after one’s morsel of Stilton! Still,” 
added Gaston, “ if you had met me on the pier I could never have 
said yes — especially as I am obliged to dine at the Fort to-night.” 


TEMPTATION, 


287 


Again Dinah was mute. She rested her hand upon the garden 
railing beside which they stood. She kept the tears hack, bravely, 
in their bed. 

“ It is guest night at mess, and there will he a larger party 
than usual. My engagement dates, really from a week ago. I 
made some idle promise, it seems, of giving the Maltshire 
youngsters a lesson in poker. By-the-bye,’' ran on Mr. Arbuthnot, 
with an air of spontaneous reminiscence, “ I remember ! Little 
Oscar Jones offered to put me up. Yery lucky I thought of tell- 
ing you. ” 

“ You intend to be away till to-morrow ? Is that your meaning, 
Gaston ? 

“ Till to-morrow, certainly. When can one get away from a 
mess-dinner before midnight ! This time, however, you will not 
be disturbed, my love. Instead of being roused at an unearthly 
hour of the morning, you will have your rest unbroken. And 
you want it, Dinah. Do you know that you are losing your color, 
that your eyes are beginning to look dark under the lower lid ? ” 
And your evening dress ? When you breakfast with Colonel 
de Gourmet, I generally see nothing of you for the remainder of 
the day.” 

My dearest girl, you are all thoughtfulness. Just put together 
what I shall want in my Gladstone. Miller will see that it goes 
up to the Fort, And do not keep in your own room, Dinah, and 
do eat dinner, instead of drinking tea, for my sake.” 

By this time Gaston Arbuthnot had progressed some paces along 
the descending path. Dinah had no choice but to return to the 
hotel, and settle dowui, after a scarcely tasted breakfast, to one of 
her accustomed days of loneliness and embroidery. 

Alas ! the mere mechanical business of cross-stitch irritated her 
cruelly. This conecientious sorting of colored wools, this rigid 
counting of threaas, oliis hour-long stabbing of a needle in and 
out of canvas — what good could be the outcome of it ? She asked 
herself the question ei’e her needle had taken a dozen stitches. 
What ill has been lessened, thought Dinah, what pleasures added 
to mortal lot by all the collective pieces of woolwork which 
patient^ dull-hearted ^/omen have executed since the world 
begun ? 

A keen, eager soul like Ilarjorie Bartrand’s would have settled 
the question unhelped, and finally, at about the age of eleven 


288 


A GITtTON GIRL. 

Dinah’s nature was essentially averse to revolution. She was slow 
at imagining new futures, and an existence without cross-stitch 
would, to her, have been the newest of all possible existences. 
But pain was beginning to sting her, not only into rebellion, but 
into quickened intelligence. It was not merely the emptiness of 
woolwork as an occupation that overcame her. She felt humil- 
iated by its want of art. She pictured the tasteless adornment 
of Aunt Susan’s humble parlor rendered a few shades more taste- 
less by the added pinks and greens and reds of her own laborious 
ottoman! She divined, as she had never done before, what her 
“pieces” must seem like in the fastidious light of Gaston and of 
his friends. 

With a sensation of disgust poor Dinah pinned a screen of silver 
paper over her forget-me-nots and auriculas. Then she took 
Geoffrey’s volume of Browning from the table. Seating herself 
in a corner of the room furthest away from the fresh air, the en- 
livening summer odors and warmth which floated in from the 
garden, she began to read. 

The book opened at “ James Lee’s Wife.” 

During the past twenty-four hours she had pondered deeply 
over the wisdom to be gained at the hands of polite society. What 
was the Langrune expedition for her but an experiment, a lesson 
whereby she might acquire the manners, the temper, the ideas (if 
such existed) of her husband’s world! The experiment had taught 
her much. Yet, I think, “ James Lee’s Wife,” read and re-read, 
through tears, had taught her more. She had discovered no 
transcendental meaning, as a learned Browning society might have 
done, in Browning’s words. But she was growing to look at life 
otherwise than by her own small rushlight of personal experience, 
to know that it was no new thing for a man’s fancy to die while 
his wife’s love burned at white heat, to realize that there was a 
wide world lying outside her own narrow embittered lot — a world 
to whose beauty and whose teachings the most self-engrossed soul 
must open itself or perish. 

Dinah Arbuthnot did not want to perish. She could be content, 
she thought, although delight was gone out of her days, if use 
survived; ready to spin the wool and bake the bread ; to return 
to the plain, sweet wholesomeness of work-a-day existence from 
which the hapless good fortune of marrying a gentleman had 
divorced her. 

To part from Gaston, in short! 


TEMPTATION, 


289 


For an instant she had a physical longing to breathe the air of 
the Devonshire moorlands. A wild hope crossed her that she 
might go btack to her father’s people, live their village lives, earn 
her own bread — be Dinah Thurston again. Then her heart smote 
her with violence. The volume fell to the floor. Could parting 
from Gaston be the beginning of better things, a turning towards 
the straight path of duty — that path along which so many a wife 
has to walk uncomplaining, through the after years of a marriage 
to wdiich happiness has not been granted ? Her existence at his 
side was more, now, than a long, slow disappointment. It was a 
growing anguish, a combat in which ignorant, plain-speaking love 
on one side had no chance against a succession of sympathetic 
rivals all uttering perfect little flatteries, all giving perfect little 
dinners, on the other. And she, Dinah, was not two-and-twenty, 
and her young heart craved, insisten ly, for sunshine. And such 
a slender change, it seemed, in the eternal foreordering of events, 
a child at her knee, a husband loving the quiet of his own fireside, 
would have made up the sum of her prosaic ambition ! 

Yet she must go on enduring. She must not part from Gaston 
until the dark final curtain shut his face lorevsr from her sight. 
What taste could she have for the Devonshire moorlands, the 
country joys whicii co*:tented her when she was a girl ? No 
human soui can ^erve two masters. After knowing passionate 
love, passionate jealousy, how could she go back to a life of no 
emotion at all, how share the village interests of people like her 
father’s folk; simple souls with whom it was a vital point whether 
the next cake should be made with carraways or with raisins,who 
could speculate through half a winter as to wdio would be “asked,’’ 
and who wear new bonnets on Easter Sunday, and in whose minds 
a visit to Exeter, or th. yearly house-cleaning ranked among the 
larger events of mortal destiny! 

The poor girl w'as reluctantly coming to the conclusion — a hard 
one to realize at her age — that she would not be extraordinarily 
welcome anywhere, when Geff Arbuthnot, unannounced, as was 
his habit, entered the parlor. 

He took in the position of affairs, promptly. Dinah’s colorless 
face, her unoccupied hands, the book lying, as it had fallen, on 
the floor, told him, with gist passing that of words, that she was 
in some fresh misery of which Gaston was the cause. 

Geoffrey’s owm heart was sore, his spirit troubled, to-day. A 
thought distantly akin to that which had newly traversed Dinah s 


290 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


mind for a moment overcame him. What a little change in the 
foreorderkig of things might have re-written the story of both 
lives ! If Dinah Thurston had chanced to love him before his 
cousin Gaston crossed her path . . . 

“ Alone— and indoors, Dinah ? ” Her Christian name for once 
slipped from his lips. “It is a day,’' quoted Geff, “ ‘ when it were 
a sullenness against Nature not to go abroad and see her riches.* 
Has Gaston i-eturned ? ” 

“ Gaston and the Thornes have returned. The Cherburg boat 
came in, long ago. And I have been out— I went down to market 
before breakfast. I enjoyed the morning wonderfully.” 

There was the kind of discrepancy between voice and statement 
that you might detect in the speech of a man who should declare 
he had “ wonderfully enjoyed ” a funeral. 

“And what are you going to do with yourself this afternoon 

“ I scarcely know — I am in an idle mood — write to one of the 
good old aunts in Devonshire, perhaps.” 

“ And Gaston ? ” 

“ Gaston will not be seen till to-morrow. He has, in the first 
place, gone out to breakfast. I was not on the pier when they 
landed, and Gaston ran quickly up here to dress. I only spoke to 
him for a few minutes outside the hotel. Colonel de Gourmet had 
waylaid him on the road, it seems, and invited him to breakfast — 
oif red mullet! The temptation, Gaston said, was irresistible.” 

A touch of sarcasm was in Mrs. Arbuthnot’s voice. 

The Guernsey red mullet is not a bad fish,” retorted Geff with 
appreciation. 

“ Breakfasting, of course, means spending the day at Colonel 
de Gourmet’s house — until the hour comes round for afternoon 
teas ! And to-night there is a dinner-party at the Fort. Gaston 
is forced to be there ... to give some of the Maltshire subalterns 
a lesson in poker. He will not be back till to-morrow, quite out 
of consideration for me ! Gaston thought me looking pale. He 
did not wish me to have another broken night.” 

The speech was delivered with a kind of staccato airiness. 
Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s face became graver and graver while Dinah 
made it. 

“ You are reading, I see, as usual. Why, you will be a con- 
firmed book-worm before long.” 

Coming closer, he picked up the volume from the floor. He 
examined the page at which it opened. 


TEMPTATION, 291 

‘ James Lee’s Wife; ’ I should say you would soon know Mrs. 
Lee’s history by heart ? ” 

“ I find something new in it, always. Don’t you think, Geff, so 
much writing must have gone far to ease her sorrow ? Or would 
writing just come natural to an educated, born lady ? In my 
class,” said Dinah, “ if trouble cut us very keen we should not 
feel like taking a copy-book to write it down.” 

The criticism, from Dinah’s point of view, was just. Geff 
sought not to controvert it. 

* “ The prettiest part of all is ‘ Beside the drawing-board.’ I was 
thinking, before you came in, I‘d rather be the little girl with the 
poor coarse hand than write the best poetry ever printed.” 

Geoffrey followed the drift of her remark. 

‘‘And Gaston?” he asked, with point. “How about his 
opinion ? We cannot look at a single morsel of our lot, forgetting 
the rest. If there is one thing Gaston admires more than another 
in a woman, it is the whiteness and delicacy of her hand.” 

“ All the same, Geff, I hate to live without work, common 
household work that makes the hands rough and red. Work is 
the same to me as your books are to you. And you know,” added 
Dinah, “ there must always be a world full of ladies, delicate, 
white-skinned, fond of idleness, whose finger-tips Gaston could 
admire.” 

The observation gave Geff an inconveniently straight glimpse 
behind the domestic curtain of his friends’ lives. Moving to the 
table he became suddenly interested in Dinah’s marketing. The 
strawberries were in their wicker basket, still ; the roses hung 
their heads as though conscious of neglect, over the rim of an 
ugly water-jug. 

You may, generally, prognosticate safely as to the state of a 
woman’s heart when she treats her flowers lovelessly. 

“ They were all for Gaston. You know how he likes to see 
fresh fruit and flowers on the breakfast table.” 

“ I know that the strawberries smell uncommonly good. They 
are to be kept, of course, for Gaston’s return ?” 

“ Oh, no.” Dinah’s voice was blankly inditferent. “ I don’t 
care now what becomes of them.” 

“You would do well to care!” exclaimed Geoffrey, looking 
round on her, shortly. There are a good many millions of 
people in the world, remember, besides Gaston Arbuthnot.” 

“Geoffrey!” 


292 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


‘‘Yes, a good many millions, the majority of them poor, an 
enormous percentage — suffering. Gaston and you, and I, are 
surfeited with good things. We are certain every day we live that 
we shall dine — think of that, Mrs. Arbuthnot, dine, with the 
accompaniment of as many strawberries and roses as we choose 
to buy.” 

The blood mantled hot over Dinah Arbuthnot’s weary face. 

“ You mean to remind me that I am selfish?” she said, very 
low. “ I know it, Geoffrey. I know that I am sinking fast into 
everything that is bad.” • 

“ In the common meaning of the words, you are the least selfish 
woman living. But you are self-absorbed — no, even that is say- 
ing too much — you are Gaston-absorbed. If you could see how 
some half-starved people manage to get along — yes, and to be 
cheerful over their crust — you might think less of strawberries 
and roses for Gaston’s breakfast-table.” 

The admonition looks rougher, set down in black and white, 
than it sounded. Dinah’s £ace grew animated. 

“ I know that to be useful in any way would do me good. Long 
ago I should have liked district-visiting in England, only you see ” 
— hesitating — ‘ we never stop long enough to explain ... I 
mean, for the clergyman of the place quite to know about one.” 

Her tone was tentative. She had an uneasy dread that young 
women who marry men above them in rank are likely, if “unex- 
plained,” to be suspect in orthodox eyes. In their early married 
days she recollected a visit paid to them by a sea-side curate with 
a subscription-list, recollected the sea-side curate’s glance when 
Gaston introduced her, with her country speech and manners, as 
“my wife.” 

And Dinah’s being the order of mind that generalizes, forever 
after, from one experience, that glance haunted her still, an un- 
comfortable reminder as to the likely sentiments of the clergy at 
large regarding herself. 

“ Not long enough to explain ! I don’t catch your meaning. 
What on earth has any clergyman in England to do with you, 
Dinah Arbuthnot? Could you not feel for misei’able people, 
work for them, serve them heartily, although you travelled round 
the country, a heathen in a caravan, although you had never 
spoken to a clergyman in your life ? ” 

“ I want some one to show me the way — that is another weak- 


TEMPTATION. 293 

ness of my character — I want some one to show me the way in 
everything good, Geff.’’ 

“ Let me show you the way to-day. You remember the sailor 
lad who got his ankle hurt as we were coming back from 
France 

That wretched passage in the fog ? Yes, Dinah remembered 
every incident of it, too well. 

“ There was worse mischief done than the surgeons feared, at 
first. Poor Jack is at present Number 28 in the accident ward of 
4he hospital. He will have to remain there a good many more 
weeks than he thinks for. Well, one may safely assert, Mrs. 
Arbuthnot, that though you and I and Gaston have roses and 
strawberries to spare, Jack has none.” 

‘‘Take them to him, of course,” Dinah exclaimed. “Surely, 
Geff, you might have done that, without asking.” 

“And do you suppose Jack would not value such gifts more if 
they came from a woman’s hand, the delicate white hand whose 
uses you despise ? To-day is Friday. On Friday afternoon the 
patients’ friends are admitted to see them. But Jack’s friends 
are far away in Devonshire. You will be his only visitor if you 
consent to come.” 

Dinah rose, acquiescently, rather than with any initiative 
warmth. She had a moment s hesitation. Gaston held such 
contradictory opinions, at times . . . No knowing if Gaston 
would approve of her putting herself forward. There was the 
Archdeaconess . . . there were the island clergy! Then, encoun- 
tering a look that had a command in it from Geoffrey’s eyes, she 
moved lingeringly towards the adjoining room. 

“ If I dressed to please myself, you need not wait two minutes, 
Geff. But the powers that be,” the little malice flashed from her 
unawares, “are sensitive— as to millinery ! I could not run the 
terrible risk of meeting Mrs. Thorne and Gaston in my mor ning 
gown.” 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 


THAT LITTLE DIVINITY. 

The project roused her, at least into physical brightness. As 
she walked at Geoffrey’s side to>yards the hospital, the basket of 
strawberries hanging from her arm, her hands filled with roses, a 
stranger meeting them, would have taken Dinah Arbuthnot for 
some April-cheeked girl, ignorant of passion as of disappointment;’ 
a girl needing no apologist! She wore, on this fateful afternoon, 
a dove-colored Quaker gown, a Gainsborough hat tied beneath 
her chin by black velvet strings; item, a large plain cambric 
tippet, with cambric half sleeves reaching to the elbows. It was 
the latest costume invented by her husband in an idle moment. 
And Geoffrey had lost exactly half-an-hour while she put it on. 

But what man would grudge a lost half-hour after one glance 
at that for which he had waited! 

The road from Miller’s Hotel to the hospital led through 
Petersport High Street, and close to the north entrance of 
Colonel de Gourmet’s garden. At the moment when Dinah and 
Geff walked along, it chanced that the Colonel, himself, reclined 
under the shaded verandah of his drawing-room, — the Colonel, 
smoking his third cheroot, and offering unsentimental criticisms 
on the dress and looks of such feminine passers-by as came within 
range of a pair of languidly held opera glasses. 

Of an afternoon Colonel de Gourmet’s drawing-room was gen. 
erally full. Lacking many, let us say lacking all the more solid 
qualities, the old East Indian sybarite had one virtue — he was 
universally hospitable. Nothing pleased him better than that a^ 
man he had invited to breakfast should loiter on till dinner. 
Nothing pleased him better than that other men whom he had not 
invited should drop in at any hour they chose, make free with his 
rare cigars, rarer wines, and entertain each other with ideas, or 
with that best discovered substitute for the trivial masculine 
mind — cards. 

In a garrison town, sea on three sides, and barely available 


THAT LITTLE DIVINITY, 


295 


space on the other for a polo match or a herring run, it may be 
believed that old Colonel de Gourmet was in no lack of callers. 

Six or eight men, young enough, most of them, to be their 
host’s grandsons, were lounging, this July afternoon, in various 
attitudes of idleness about his pleasant bachelor drawing-room. 
The air was lightly impregnated with tobacco smoke, so good of 
its kind that, mingled with the wafted garden sweets, it scarcely 
seemed grosser than some finely distilled odor of musk flower or 
of tea-rose. Gaston Arbuthnot was on the point of finishing a 
match at e'carte with little Oscar Jones — two or three of Oscar’s 
brother officers forming a silent and discriminative gallery. 

Cards, simply as cards, Gaston Arbuthnot disliked, although he 
had an inborn knack of playing most things successfully. The 
childish intricacies of a game like Nap., beloved of all the Malt- 
shire subalterns, was to him a weariness of spirit, 

“ We can use your English Nap. as a means,” he would tell 
them, frankly, “just as we can use blind hookey or, simpler than 
either, chicken hazard, if we want to transfer money from one 
man’s pocket to another. As a matter of amusement, I would 
sooner play euchre or poker for counters : In poker especially, 
all our natural human instincts — bluster, blufling, intent to de- 
ceive, &c. — come agreeably to the fore.” 

Whist, Gaston confessed, he played well. At ecarte he was 
moderately good. This moderate goodness his antagonist was 
about to test practically. 

“ Four all! ” cried little Oscar, eager over a just-dealt, brilliant 
hand of trumps. 

“The king,” said Gaston, quietly laying down his cards. 
“ Some one tell de Gourmet it is his turn to cut in.” 

The Colonel had now risen to his feet. lie was watching an 
object, evidently of paramount interest, through his opera glasses. 

“ A throat — an ankle — shoulders! Tell you what it is, sir, — 
she is the prettiest woman in the Island — not one of our society 
beauties can hold a candle to her! And she’s not a woman one 
meets at any of the parties. — By-and-by, Arbuthnot, by-and- 
by.” For Gaston, with a presentiment of the truth, sat, restlessly, 
shuffling and re-shuffling the cards. “ To* view the Queen of 
Hearts in flesh and blood is better, surely, than handling her in 
pasteboard. Now where did one see that little divinity before ? 
At Saturday’s rose-show, of course. Asked Linda Thorne about 
her. Mrs. Linda, true type of her sex, affected not to know her 


296 


A GIUrON GIUL, 


Dame. Luckily, such a paragon does not need a name. An 
Archdeaconess, if I mistake not, threw her little pebble. ‘ The 
young person with the yellow hair was — nobody one knew.’ ” 

Every man in the room, with the exception of Arbuthnot, had 
by this time crowded to the window. One of the youngsters 
hazarded a bold whisper in the host’s ear. It was old de Gour- 
met’s deafer ear. He caught the note of warning imperfectly. 
He resumed his parable with warmth : 

‘‘French woman, do you say? Cannot believe it, sir. N'o 
French woman had ever such a complexion, such hair. But the 
dress, with its complex simplicity, comes from Paris, doubtless. 
Hove colored mousseline de laine.” The Colonel made these 
things as much a study as his Brillat Savarin. “ A tippet design- 
edly plain such as Perfection, only, dare i)ut on. A little black 
velvet knot beneath the dainty chin . . . (Directly, Arbuthnot, 
directly — cairn your impatience. ) And look at her teeth, now she 
smiles, and her dimples! The young fellow with her seems 
disposed to make the best of his opportunities — small blame to 
him ! ” 

Throughout the listeners there ran a flash of hideous silence. 
At last some one passed a slip of paper, on which a name had 
been hastily scribbled, into Colonel de Gourmet’s gouty fingers, 
and then arose general conversation, mainly as to the weather 
prospects. After this fog that had been hanging about the Chan- 
nel for days, and with the glass running down fast, what were 
the chances we should not have a thunder-storm in the course of 
the next twenty-four hours ? 

Gaston Arbuthnot arranged the cards in two neat packs on the 
table and waited silently for his host. He felt morally certain 
that the little divinity was his wife, also that Lord Rex Basire was 
her companion. And a wholesomely bitter contrition filled his 
soul, a feeling widely differing from the vague disrelish with which 
he had watched her teaching Basire cross-stitch five daj^s before. 
Probably he never knew how dear Dinah’s white name was to 
him, never realized how culpably he had left her in the shade, 
until this moment’s humiliation. 

And still Gaston’s countenance betrayed him not. An instant 
later, he was rallying the Colonel on his boyish enthusiasm, con- 
fessing that, for his own part, he was too staid a Benedict to exert 
himself, at the present state of the thermometer, merely because 
a nice looking woman happened to pass along the street. 

N “ And what are our stakes— the usual fiver ? ” asked de Gour- 


THAT LITTLE DIVINITY. 


297 


met, looking immensely tickled as he hobbled across the room to 
the card-table. “ I am afraid of you though, Arbuthnot ! You 
are just the man to be in luck.’’ 

I don’t believe in luck. Conduct is fate.” Gaston lifted his 
handsome face He fixed his clear steady glance on the somewhat 
SilciiLis features over against him. “ Champagne ? — I thank you, 
Colonel. Ko brain-enemy, just at present. Don’t you know that 
we Yankees keep our heads cool ” 

“On purpose to rook the Britishers,” interrupted de Gourmet, 
still with a suppressed chuckle in his voice. 

“ On purpose to rook the Britishers. Now, let us attend to 
business, sir,” said Gaston cheerfully. “ The best of three games 
for a five-pound note — good!” 

The little divinity and her companion had by this time reached 
the hospital gates. 

“ I hope I shall use the proper words, Geff,” whispered Dinah, 
looking flushed and nervous. “ The kind of exhortation^ you 
know, that clergymen’s wives would give to sick people.” 

“Impossible!” Geoffrey disencouraged her promptly. “ Or- 
thodoxy cannot be learnt at a moment’s notice. You must be 
content to be — yourself! And that is much,” he added, w^atching 
her beautiful, earnest face. “Your sermon may well be a silent 
one. Look, just as you are looking at this moment, and leave the 
rest to the patient’s human nature. Jack may be a miserable sin- 
ner, needing homilies. That is a fact you and I have no certitude 
about. We know that he is a poor lad, far from his people, laid 
low in pain and weakness. Depend upon it, the sound of a tender 
voice, the sight of Dinah Arbuthnot’ s face, must prove good med- 
icine, both for his soul and body.” 

The tears started to Dinah’s eyes. She was just at that tension 
point of suppressed emotion when a kindly accent, a word or two 
of praise, are as hands extended to a drowning man. If Gaston 
only esteemed her poor personal gifts as Geoffrey did — for, of 
whatever she thought, to-day, Gaston still was beneath the cur- 
rent of her thinking! Nay (this followed by a descending, yet 
inevitable sequence of ideas), if Gaston could only hold the 
opinion of her held — Dinah, remembering events, had a little 
thrill of shame — by a man like Lord Bex Basire! 

Perhaps the sum-total of yoked infelicity might be lessened 
if careless husbands would reckon with themselves, sometimes, 
concerning the number of their deserved rivals — such husbands, 


298 


A GIETON GIRL. 


I mean, as possess wives of Dinah Arbuthnot’s mould. For must 
not the answer be trumpet-tongued : “ The whole seeing world!” 
Does not every man, save the purblind, range himself by intuition 
on the side of a young and beautiful and neglected woman ? But 
careless husbands may not have imagination enough for such a 
stretch, or there may be sympathizers . . . outside feminine 

judges . . . mature sirens ... a clever wdiisper, even, 

now and then. And so the wife’s heart continues to ache to the 
last — or gives up aching of a sudden ; deeper tragedy, by far. 

Dinah’s color went and came as she traversed the corridors of 
the hospital beside Geoffrey. The moment they entered Ward A., 
the men’s accident room, she forgot her want of knowledge, of 
orthodoxy. Explanation ” was not needed here. She saw only 
the rows of beds, each bed with its pallid inmate. She felt only 
that she was Dinah Thurston among the poor, the simple, the 
suffering, — among her equals. 

The patients in the ward were mostly working-men in the 
springtime of their strength, the majority of them victims of the 
late quarry accident. A few, like poor Jack, had been struck 
down by mishap at sea or in the harbor. Beside nearly every bed 
w^as a visitor. Here might be seen a country girl talking in 
whispers to her sweetheart. Here a pale wife clasped her hus- 
band’s hand, or a mother in silent anguish watched her lad’s 
changed face. On every pillow was a little posy of sweet-smelling 
cottage flowers, reminding the gaunt sufferers who lay there, 
patient and uncomplaining, of blue summer sky, of the freshness 
of fields and gardens, of home. 

Number 28 had neither visitor nor posy. Poor Jack came from 
a remote hamlet among the Devonshire moors. His mates on 
board the Princess were afloat again. The lad had no friends, 
save the surgeons and nurses of the Guernsey hospital — and Geff 
Arbuthnot. 

Speak to him about his own country,” Geoffrey whispered 
as his companion drew back a little; ‘‘Jack will dispense with 
any formal introduction.” 

And on this, Dinah, her face overflowing with sweetest womanly 
compassion, stooped over the low pallet and spoke a commonplace 
word or two, unworthy of raising to the dignity of print — a word 
or two whose homely Devonshire lilt called the blood up to Jack’s 
temples as though some voice from the old familiar home ad- 
dressed him. 


THAT LITTLE DIVINITY. 


299 


Since her marriage, Dinah had learnt to speak English, with 
a foreign pronunciation,” Gaston would tell her, “yet scarcely 
strong enough to be disagreeable.” Although a certain cadence 
was traceable, ever and again, in her speech, she had tardily suc- 
ceeded in putting away the Devonshire burr that was strong on 
her tongue when Geoifrey met her first. Here, at Jack’s bedside, 
no Gaston near to be put to shame, she fell back, instinctively, 
upon the West Country acceht, the soft half-strange, half-farniliar 
o’s and u’s of her childhood. 

“It’s so bad to be sick, for a young fellow like you, and away 
from home We just thought you might like a talk with some 
one Devonshire born and bred. I wonder, now', do you and I 
come from the same part ? ” 

“ I was born at Torrhill, a village out away beyond Chagford. 
A poor place, ma’am, on the borders of the moor — quite a poor 
place,” repeated Jack apologetically. 

“ Why, that is near to my own town, Tavistock! ” said Dinah. 
“ We used to pass Torrhill going along the Vale of Widdicombe 
every autumn when we went out wdiortle-berrying. ‘ Torrhill, in 
the cold country.’ 1 mind we children used to say, when we got 
snow-storms in winter, ‘ the Widdicombe folk were picking their 
geese.’” 

Well, and as he listened to her simple talk, to the soft West 
Country accent, it came to pass that Geff Arbuthnot’s heart knew 
a thrill of its old infatuation. No man can possibly hold two 
women dear at the same time. And Geoffrey was in love — the 
warm flesh-and-blood love of four-and-twenty — with an actuality, 
not a remembrance. But his heart thrilled at Dinah’s voice. 
Something in his temperament forbade him to outlive the past, 
wholly. It was a book that could not be clasped. A word, an 
accent, and the enchantment cast upon him in the long dead sum- 
mer days at Lesser Cheriton would be revitalized. This was his 
weakness (a conscious one) always; and now he was in the dan- 
gerous state of w'ounded feeling when a man’s tenderness is easily 
arrested at rebound . . . 

Those Devonshire o’s and u’s brought back before him in its 
fiery ardor the fortnight when he worshipped Dinah Thurston’s 
footsteps, the fortnight ending on that evening when Gaston and 
his friends drove past in the twilight on their return from Ely. 
Standing here, in the Guernsey hospital ward, Geoffrey’s senses 
recalled the rush of wheels down the village street, the lingering 
daylight in the low fields of Cambridgeshire sky. He remeinbered 
how Dinah’s head and throat stood out in waxen relief against the 
dusky arbutus hedge of the cottage garden. 

And he decided, "there and then,— yes, while she was chatting, 
low-voiced, smiling, to the lad about the moors and the “cold 
country ” and the autumn huckle-berrying— to return to England 
forthwith. 

A French steamer was to touch at Petersport on Sunday morn- 
ing. That would give him to-morrow for winding up his small 


300 


.1 Gin TON GIRL. 


affairs, for taking leave of his patients, for visiting Tintajeux. 
He would kiss, in coldest fancy, the hair, the lips that should 
have made up to him for the unattainable heaven of his youth’s 
desire. He w'ould look once again in Marjorie’s eyes, and go.. It 
was possible — here, at least, might be a gleam of comfort — that 
Gaston and Dinah would steer clearer through their difficulties if 
left absolutely alone than they were doing now. 

He told her of his intention when they were on their way back 
to the hotel. 

“ And remember, you know your way back to the hospital,” he 
added, quickly, as Dinah was about to speak. ‘‘I hope when I 
am gone you will pay Jack many a kind little visit, your hands 
as full of fruits and flowers as they were to-day.” 

“ When you are gone! ” echoed Dinah, blankly. The fear smote 
her that with Geoffrey’s going such a slack hold as she still had 
upon Gaston must be loosened. “ I hoped you would remain 
here ... as long at least as I must. Think of all the sick people 
who will miss you, Geff. Think of Miss Bart rand.” 

I shall find sick people everywhere. In the matter of doctors 
Guernsey is full of better men than I,” 

‘‘ And Marjorie Bartrand ?” 

“ Ah ! that is a different side of the question. I am conceited 
enough to think Miss Bartrand’s mathematics will suffer.” 

And you don’t care — you are not one bit sorry at giving her 
up ? Do you know, Geoffrey, I had begun to hope ” 

‘‘ Miss Bartrand will be a Girton girl before long,” interrupted 
Geoffrey. “ Happily,” — he paused— “ she is not without self- 
reliance, has more than a woman’s share, perhaps, of ambition. 
When we see each other next it will be as fellow students in 
Canibridge.” 

Dinah knew the tone of his voice. It was not a tone that in^ 
vited discussion. 

“Your leaving is an ill stroke of luck for me, Geff. Day by 
day Gaston’s engagements seem to grow upon him. My time 
will be emptier when you are gone.” 

“ You may fill it, full as time can hold. I thought iis I watched 
you charming poor Jack out of knowledge of his pain that you 
had missed your vocation. You should be a nurse. Yours are 
the ideal fa6e and voice and tread that we want in the hospitals. 
If you ever harbor thoughts of emancipation or of a mission,” 
said Geoffrey, “ remember my hint.” 

“When Gaston has used the last line that can be modelled 
from my face, for instance ? ” 

The smile was flickering with which Dinah hazarded the 
surmise. 

“ When Gaston has got his last inspiration from your face ! 
Unluckily for the hospitals, that day will not come quite yet. A 
woman with a mission should have no such vexatious encum- 
brance as a husband or a lover.” 

For once, Geoffrey’s tone was cynical. He recalled his parting 
with Marjorie Bartrand over-night. 


CHAPTER XL. 


AT THE BUNGALOW. 

And all this time an offer of truce lay on the mantelshelf of 
Dinah’s parlor; an offer, directed to himself in the handwriting 
whose Greek e’s, whose girlish assumption of scholarship, Geof- 
frey’s heart knew ! 

Can we wonder at the pagan notion that the gods must needs 
hold their sides for laughter when they gaze down on the ever- 
twisted plot of our little lives ? Geoffrey and Dinah were within 
a hundred feet of Miller’s house. Five minutes more and Geff 
must have been lifted — this time ijito quite other than a Fool’s 
Paradise, when, abruptly, a new actor, jauntily floating in cobweb 
Indian silk, gleaming under a scarlet sunshade, with eight but- 
toned gloves, with airs, with graces, innumerable, made her en- 
trance upon the scene. 

Mrs. Thorne’s manner was confident to-day, as of one with 
whom the world goes well. She ran skittishly down the steps 
leading from the hotel garden. She paused, lapping a high- 
heeled shoe in pretty impatience on the gravel. She looked this, 
way and that expectantly ; at length, it would seem, decided, with 
a little merry shake of the head, for the chances of town over 
country. Then, with such ease of tread as high-heeled shoes are 
apt to confer on ladies whose summers are increasing, she com- 
menced the steep descent of the hill. 

“I hope Mrs. Thorne has not been calling on me. I hope, if 
we stop, she will make me no pretty speeches,” said Dinah under 
her breath. “ I could not bear them just now. If Mrs. Thorne 
makes pretty speeches, I shall say something true to her.” 

. Geoffrey, manlike, showed signs of instant flight on hearing the 
ultimatum. He was in no vein, he said, for Linda Thorne’s fine 
spirits (was in no vein, I fear, for the better sex, at all, in its 
liveliness, or its asperity) ; he had an appointment to keep, a cas?» 


302 


A GIllTON GIRL. 


of life and death, at the bedside of one of the quarry workers, — 
would not be back till late — it was time for him to be on his road, 
and — 

“ In short,’* interrupted Dinah, you have not courage to meet 
Mrs. Thorne!” 

‘‘ If you like to say so — yes,” was Gelf’s answer. ‘‘ But don’t 
tell Mrs. Tliorne the truth.” He whispered this to Dinah, at 
parting. “ Or tell her such trutli only as affects herself, not you. 

Dinah, however, was not in a temper for advice, even Geoffrey’s. 
Erect of carriage, with a flush of the cheeks, a fire in the eyes 
Dinah walked grandly up the hill, determined, at every cost, that 
final truth should be spoken between her and Mrs. Thorne, did 
opportunity offer. 

So our philosopher shows valor’s better part,” thought Linda, 
as Geff vanished down a turning to the right. Mr Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot positively declines to face me! We have never been 
rapturously fond of each other. Now it is to be war to the knife. 
Excellent, detestable young man! I accept the challenge.” 

And Mrs. Thorne mentally kissed her pale buff finger tips in 
the direction taken by Geoffrey. 

Dinah, meanwhile, had breasted the hill. Her head was held 
aloft, her fine arms were folded in one of those attitudes of 
natural repose that had always been the despair of Gaston’s 
pencil. To the artist who has no “ wood notes wild,” the virtuoso 
with whom craft, workmanship, style, are all in all, is not perfect 
naturalness the most difficult to woo among the graces ! 

Linda spoke first. So very glad to meet you. I have this 
moment called at Miller’s and found you absent. AVe can have 
our chat out of doors.” 

She was serenely void of conscience. It was probably a mere 
physical sensation of antagonism that hindered Mrs. Thorne from 
offering poor magnificent Dinah her hand. 

‘‘To begin with, I must unburthen my soul by confession.” So 
she ran on gayly. “ My visit was, really and truly, to your 
husband.” 

Not a change of color, not a shade of expression passed across 
the face of Gaston’s wife. She possessed the self-preserving in- 
stincts of many weaker creatures, and of her sex in general, could 
conceal, feign, dissemble — except under the eyes, and at the voice 
of him she loved. 

“ The other night, at sea, just before the steamer stopped at 


AT THE BUNGALOW. 


303 


Alderney, you must know that he and I made a bet, a very foolish 
one.’^ Linda had the grace to color as she remembered what 
that bet was about. And Mr. Arbuthnot won. He wins in 
everything, it seems ? ’’ 

A compliment may have been implied by the tone. It fell dead 
on Dinah Arbuthnot’s prejudiced ears. 

And so I thought I would run up this afternoon to discharge 
my debt. I deposited the stakes on a corner of your mantelpiece. 
If you see Mr. Arbuthnot before I do, tell him, from me, that he 
has won, — that I am bankrupt! You will forgive me for invading 
your sitting-room, without leave, will you not ? ” 

Still Dinah did not speak. Her eyes glowed, deepened until 
their soft English hazel seemed turned turned to black. 

“ I have known you long enough — we are sufficiently intimate, 
went on Linda, feeling that she was being forced into the fencing 
attitude — for one to venture on such a liberty ? ” 

You can venture where you choose,” Forth came the reply 
in Dinah’s full, rounded tones. The room is Gaston’s. How 
can I question your right of entering it ? But I must ask you 
not to speak of intimacy. If I saw you daily, until the last day I 
live, I should never be intimate with you,” 

Her voice was crystal clear, by reason of its low pitch. Every 
w’ord was w^eighted by passionate, long pent-up feeling, Linda 
Thorne shifted about, ill at ease, on the feet that a minute ago 
had danced under her weight so airily. 

“We ought, positively, to see more of each other! I think it 
quite too charming of you to be so sincere— quite. I always say 
to my friends — ‘ Mrs. Arbuthnot has that most refreshing, that 
rarest of gifts, sincerity.’” 

“ Do you say this ? Saying this, do you mean to speak well of 
me ? ” 

‘‘ Dearest Mrs. Arbuthnot! Can fou doubt the honesty of my 
intentions ? ” 

“Never say it again. Be generous enough at least to spare me 
your praise.” 

The rapier points had lost their buttons. Linda Thorne fell 
into position quickly. That Dinah, good Griselda-like woman, 
loved her careless husband to the pitch of jealous idolatry, had 
been patent to her long before. Still, viewing the Arbuthnot 
household from her own level, Linda’s judgment was — that 
Griselda had consolations. Mild ones, if you will: the devotion 


304 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


of Lord Rex Basire impartially oifered to every pink-and-white 
nonentity he came across ; the constant society, tinged by that 
glamour which beautiful women confer on all their relationships, 
of the excellent, detestable Scotch cousin, Geoffrey Arbuthnot. 
But consolations, nevertheless. 

And this judgment sharpened her reply. 

“ If I were to refrain from praising you, my dear creature, I 
should lay me open to the charge of envy, the one vice,” observed 
Linda, with pathetic self depreciation, “ which I am free from. 
Every man in this island, my own good husband included, sounds 
your praise. You have absolutely a queue — I mean,*’ consider- 
ately translating, “ a little train of conquests ! Lord Rex Basire, 
Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot ” 

‘* I ask you to stop! In the class of life I come from,” ex- 
claimed Dinah, aflame, “ we hold it unworthy for a married 
woman to make conquests ” 

“ Rather severe, surely! Cleopatra may never have known she 
had conquered, until Anthony’s peace was gone.” 

*‘ Just as we hold it unworthy in any woman, married or single, 
to beguile the husband of another.” 

A tiny pink-hued veil reached to the tip of Linda’s nose. We 
may assume that the veil concealed Linda’s usual percentage 
of well-applied rice powder. But a gleam of white anger showed 
through veil and powder alike. A nervous quiver worked around 
her thin lips. For a moment it seemed as though Mrs. Thorne’s 
vulnerable point were found, as though her antagonist’s last 
thrust had gone home. 

Then she recovered herself, without too palpable effort. She 
laughed good-humouredly. 

Our strain is getting over tragic. We live in the day of little 
things. Sensation is out of vogue. Nobody pushes husbands 
down wells. Nobody ‘ beguiles ’ the husbands of worthier people. 
Even if It were otherwise, If Viviens were as the sands of yonder 
Channel, your happiness, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, would be secure.” 
It must be confessed that Linda made her counter-stroke with 
admirable neatness. ‘*A beautiful woman married to an artist 
holds him in chains, rose-decked ones, of course, but chains — 
chains. 

She forced Dinah to touch fingers. She covered her retreat 
under a little roulade of interjections sent back, with grimace of 
friendliness, across an expressive shoulder. ** So fortunate one 


AT THE BUNGALOW. 


305 


left the Princess ! Never could my Kobbie have stood the terrors 
of that night! One hears whispers on all sides of heroic courage! 
Mrs. Arbuthiiot’s name foremost! ” Then Linda Thorne tripped 
down the hill, by virtue of superior coolness mistress outwardly 
of the situation, but with her heart thumping uneasily, with the 
queerest, hottest sense experience had ever brought her of dis 
comfiture and defeat. 

That Dinah’s temper had reached the point which chemists call 
flashing point was certain. Another encounter like this, with 
sharpened memories on both sides, probably with the added ele- 
ments of ail audience, and either Linda Thorne or Dinah Arbuth- 
not must become ridiculous. 

It was a dilemma, thought Linda, out of which the finest tact, 
the promptest self-effacement, could scarcely help one. She was 
like a prime minister — the presumptuous simile tickled her — a 
prime minister who having lost the lead of the House, would fain 
transfer his power, gracefully, to the chief of the Opposition. 

Dinah was that chief ; and she, Linda Thorne, was genuinely 
ready to abdicate. There was in Linda’s nature a thin stratum of 
Bohemianism ; the bulk of the woman was Philistine. Sire liked 
small popularities, to air her domestic excellences, her devotion to 
her Kobbie ! She liked to talk serious talk. She liked to dine 
with the Archdeacon! Sooner than run the risk of scandal, or go 
through scenes of such dimensions as this scene with Dinah, she 
felt that it would be well to take Kobbie and the infant, pack up 
her portmanteau, and fly. Oh, if Mrs. Arbuthnot — a bright 
thought striking her — could but be made to pack hers and go — 
never to return I Even if poor Dinah took the worshipped Gaston 
with her, Mrs. Thorne felt that the price would not be too high. 
She would forfeit every sentimental friendship in the world sooner 
than again encounter the scorn, the passion of Dinah’s girlish 
face. Above all — with an audience’ 

It was, really, this vision of an auSence, of public battles-royal, 
of ridicule, perhaps of knowledge of defeat, which fired Linda 
Thorne’s conscienee to the height of renunciation. 

Arriving at the garden gate of The Bungalow she heard — no 
unfamiliar sound — the voices of Kahnee and of Gaston Arbuth- 
not, at high play within. Before discovering herself, the mistress 
of the house peeped for a minute through the ivy-colored railings. 
She saw Kahnee aloft on Arbuthnot’s tall shoulder, one little 
skinny hand clutching tight round his neck, the other beating him 
stoutly with a switch. 


30(3 


A GIBTON GIBL, 


‘‘Faster! Missy But’ not! Ballop, dallop ! ” shrieked Kahnee. 

The child’s vigorous kicks were testifying to her delicious sense 
of power over her slave, when the unwelcome gleam of a scarlet 
sunshade caught her eyes. 

“Kahnee — terrible infant! ” cried Linda, falling back on the 
tired Indian voice that had been absent during her colloquy with 
Dinah. “Come down, naughty girl. Think how you must be 
teazing Mr. Arbuthnot ” 

“ No, me no teaze Missy But’not. Go away ! ” The thin arms 
imperiously motioned Linda’s dismissal. “ We not want nobody — > 
Missy But’not and Kahnee! ” 

“ My visit is to Kahnee exclusively,” observed Gaston. “Ke- 
member, Mrs. Thorne! You warned me not to come to The 
Bungalow. A mysterious something might happen before five 
o’clock converting us forever into enemies. But I will not have 
Kahnee included in the feud.” 

“ Did I talk such nonsense — really? ” cried Linda, with a forced 
laugh. “ Well, who knows ? Perhaps it will turn out that I was 
a prophetess, after all. Kahnee, little tyrant, come down this 
instanh” 

At a signal from Mrs. Thorne the ayah, who had been placidly 
dozing on her square of carpet in the shade, arose. With a quick 
flank movement the black woman bore down on Kahnee. Upon 
this, Kahnee, clinging closer to Gaston, raised her shrill voice to 
its topmost limits. 

“Kahnee, I command! Oh I dear — dear, what a trial children 
are at a high temperature! Well, then, if you won’t be good,” — 
Linda drew from her pocket a little silvery packet tied with 
cherry-colored ribbon — “ if Kahnee won’t be a good girl . . . What 
does she think mamma has brought her from town ? ” 

“ Tandy! ” cried Kahnee, with a sudden accession of repentant 
wisdom. “ Kahnee not teas oor Missy But’not no more.” 



And bestowing two or thFee resonant kisses on Gaston, the 
child slid down out Of his anns. She gave her mother a careless 
caress, then vanished, hiding herself and her “tandy” under the 
ayah’s ample cotton cloak, into The Bungalow. 

“ She really is not a bad little monkey,” said Linda, who 
thoroughly believed in her own system of education. “Touch 
Kahnee’s feelings, and you can at once bring her to obedience. 
Feeling is the grand requisite in a child’s nature.” 

“ Who would not be virtuous,” observed Gaston Arbuthnot, 


A T THE B UNO ALOW. 


307 


“ if virtue were always rewarded by providential sugar candy ? ” 

And I so wanted to have a few minutes’ quiet talk with you. 
Do you know, Mr. Arbuthnot, I am . . . seriously afraid ” — for 
once Linda Thorne’s words came slow and haltingly — “ seriously 
afraid . . . you will pardon me, I hope, for saying this — that Mrs. 
Arbuthnot cannot be well.” 

“ Dinah! Why, she was fresh as a lily when I parted from her 
this morning. I have indirectly heard of her looking her best, 
since ” 

But Gaston’s face was unsmiling. The moment when he 
shuffled and re-shuffled the ecarte packs, half a dozen men crowd- 
ing to the verandah of Colonel de Gourmet’s drawing-room, 
returned upon him with significant and disagreeable clearness. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot is looking exquisite. I thought I had never 
admired her so mucli as in her Quaker dress, her simply country 
hat! Still, there may be a bloom which exceeds health, a white 
which is too transparent. Your wife strikes me — how shall I 
describe her state — as low spirited, hysterical! ” 

“ She eats and sleeps well. She can walk half round the island. 
Difficult to conceive of a young woman with Dinah’s magnificent 
constitution as hysterical.” 

“ But she is so. I met Mrs. Arbuthnot on my way down from 
Miller’s Hotel. I told her about our foolish wager, and how I had 
honestly called to discharge my debt. A propos de bottes, you 
will find your gloves on a corner of the mantel-piece.” 

And Dinah ? ” 

“ Dinah, I was afraid, looked like weeping under the broad 
light of day in the open street.” 

‘^Impossible! She is little given to idle tears, even when cause 
exists for shedding them.” 

Gaston had reddened. He made the statement in the quiet 
tone of a man sure of his facts. 

“ I felt as though I had committed some horrible crime — and of 
course, when people’s nerves are unstrung, it is sheer cruelty to 
attempt to argue with them. Our soft Guernsey air may be at 
the root of the mischief. Half the disorders in these Channel 
places are nervous ones.” 

My wife does not know the meaning of nerves. Your kind- 
heartedness, dear Mrs. Thorne, for once leads you wide of the 
mark. Will you let me smoke a cigarette ? ” asked Gaston, con- 
sulting his watch. “ In ten minutes’ time I must be on my way 
to the Fort.” 


808 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


They walked up and down, amicably chatting among the blue- 
gray shadows of the lawn. Neither was ignorant of the art by 
which speech can be used for the concealment of thought, and 
Dinah’s name was not mentioned until the moment came for 
Gaston’s departure. Then Linda Thorne spoke again, and to the 
point. 

I meant every word I uttered, Mr. Arbuthnot, and my best 
advice to you is, give your wife change. Why not try Sark ? It 
is the lightest air we have in the Archipelago. Or, better still, 
run over for ten days to Brittany.” In saying this, she glanced 
at him through her eyelasses, “ You must, at least, allow that I 
am unselfish ? ” 

“I allow only that you want to get rid of us,” laughed Gaston 
Arbuthnot, with imperturbable neutrality. Also, that your way 
of working the scheme out is charming. You pack up wise 
counsel, Mrs. Thorne, in silver paper, tied with rose-colored 
ribbon as you do Kahnee’s candy I ” 


CHAPTER XLI. 


ONE WORD. 

The French waitress met Dinah as she entered the hotel. 

Madame Thorne had called — there was scarce five minutes since. 
The visitor insisted . . . but insisted on entering. A thousand 
amiabilities were to be transmitted by the tongue of Louise, and 
something — the Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders vaguely — 
had been left in Madame’s salon for Monsieur. 

‘‘ I know all about it,” cried Dinah, with readiness. “ Mrs. 
Thorne and I have just been talking together. It is quite right, 
Louise.” 

She assumed the lightest, most cheerful tone of which she was 
mistress, feeling, with inward smart, that the French shrug was 
over-vague, that a glimmer of suspicious knowledge showed on 
the serving-woman’s face. Then she walked, her step mock- 
elastic, a poorly counterfeited smile upon her lips, to her sitting- 
room. Shutting the door, with the automatic care human beings 
bestow on trivial actions in times when their hearts are fullest, 
Dinah walked straight to the fireplace. The “something” left 
for Monsieur was evidently before her. A letter, almost amount- 
ing to a packet, stood on the mantelpiece> It was addressed in 
large, decisive handwriting to “ Mr. G. Arbuthnot, Miller’s 
Hotel, Guernsey.” 

(Cette chere Smeet! Elle sait si bien s’effacer! A pair of iron- 
gray men’s gloves lying, modestly; oindhe further corner of the 
shelf did not arrest Dinah Arbuthnot’s sight. ) 

“Mr. G. Arbuthnot, Miller’s Hotel, Guernsey.” 

Well, Reader, if Dinah had possessed only a few grains more of 
worldly experience it must have been clear to her that this letter 
never issued from The Bungalow. In the first place, by reason of 
the handwriting — when did a woman of Linda’s culture affect the 
Greek e’s, the up and down characters of an undergraduate? In 
the second, by the ignorance of common English etiquette which 
the use of the title “Mr.” betrayed. 


310 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


But Dinah had no worldly experience at all, neither had she 
the imaginativeness which renders some equally untaught people 
nimble at guessing. In her mind was one engrossing thought — 
Gaston. In her ears rang the text of Mrs. Thorne’s message. “ I 
deposited the stakes on a corner of your mantelshelf. Tell your 
husband from me that he has won, that I am bankrupt.” 

There was no room in her tempest of heart and brain for doubts 
that could have been favorable to her own peace. 

‘‘Mr. G. Arbuthnot, Miller's Hotel.” She took the letter — at 
first with unwillingness — in her hands. She turned it over and 
over. The envelope was too small for all that the sender had 
forced it to contain; it adhered on one side, only. A touch, Dinah 
thought, shrinking from her thought, and the edges must come 
asunder. Her hands trembled so violently that she let the letter 
fall, with some force, on the ground. As she picked it uj^ she 
saw that the narrow edge of adhering envelope had become 
narrower. An instant more of dalliance — and the temptation, 
strong and imperious, to open it, altogether, had taken hold of 
her. 

“ Be true to yourself,” whispered a still small voice, the voice 
of Dinah’s better nature, ‘'loyal, upright, as you have striven to 
be from the day you married Gaston Arbutlmot. Go away from 
him to-night, to-morrow, if you have not wifely courage to live 
your life out at his side. But go, with head erect, looking neither 
to the right hand nor the left, till the last.” 

Then rose another voice, bolder of tone, of strain less heroic. 

“Poor, foolish, hot-hearted woman! Is it not possible that 
you are brewing a thunderstorm in a tea-cup ? Why these turns 
and twistings of conscience ? Linda Thorne, Mr. Gaston Arbuth- 
not, thinking no evil, make one of the silly wagers common 
among idle people who inhabit an idle world. The lady is the 
loser, calls at her friend’s liotel to discharge her debt, and meet- 
ing the friend’s wife, confesses, playfully, that she is bankrupt! 
Open that quarter-inch of yawning envelope, as Linda Thorne, no 
doubt, intended you to do. In Gaston’s absence, you have often 
opened letters addressed to him, by his own desire. Where is 
the fancied line between former right and present wrong ? How 
could it matter to Gaston if you did see the contents of a packet 
in which there is probably not a syllable of writing ?” 

And Dinah’s heart was vanquished by the meanness of oppor- 
tunity. She opened it. 


ONE WORT). 


311 


A length of folded ribbon met her sight; a tiny bouquet, 
odorous still with yesterday’s sweetness, of briar and of helio- 
trope ; a* sheet of notepaper upon which one word was written. 
Bare hints — outlines of some unknown story, which jealous 
passion might easily color — fill up with vivid detail, endow with 
pulsating life! After the first moment’s shock, Dinah stood like 
a woman petrified. Her eyes were fixed on the one word — never 
meant for their perusal ! Her face was bloodless. She felt cold, 
stupefied with anger. It seemed to her that she could not drag 
herself from the spot where this hateful, sure light had dispelled 
her darkness forever. She waited — as though waiting could avail 
her! At last the striking of a clock caused her to start. She had 
got to dress, she remembered, to face men and women, to dine — 
for Gaston’s sake. With an effort that almost cost her bodily 
pain, Dinah made her way into her bedroom. She locked, double- 
locked the door. Then holding the envelope and its contents 
between her shivering hands, she tried to force herself into calm- 
ness, to resolve on conduct, if that were possible, which should be 
just to herself and to her husband. 

He was guilty of no actual wrong-doing. This thought pre- 
sented itself, in clear pure light, amidst all the dusky half shades 
of her mind. Gaston was fickle, neglectful of herself, too easily 
led captive along the road of pleasure. Worse things than these 
she could never think of him. To the moment of her death he 
must remain her best beloved and her lord ; the one man, could 
the hour of choosing come again, whom she must choose out of 
ten thousand. She did not accuse Gaston of wrong. She sought 
not to blacken Linda. For aught she knew, these delicately sen- 
timental friendships, tlu'se intimacies which permitted tender 
expression — the yielding of a ribbon or a flower! — might, in the 
world above her head, he held innocent. 

What she did know was that she, Dinah, belonged not to that 
world, desired no further education in its usages. A comedy . . . 
an attiusing drawing-room charade, perhaps . . . was in course 
of rehearsal between a tired Indian lady, needing sensation, and 
her husband. She would not passively, ignobly stand by, a spec- 
tator. She would drag out her life of paltry distrust no longer. 
Gaston’s formal leave must be asked for, before she started; 
money also — enough to take her from Guernsey to the Devonshire 
moors. This would be all. Briefly, if Heaven would help her, 
honestly, she would tell Gaston what wish lay next her heart. 


312 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


And Gaston was not likely to thwart her! By Monday — oh, that 
it could be earlier — she would go back to her own people, to a life 
shone on by no sun, watered by no shower, a life shut t)ut from 
keen pleasure as from keen humiliation for evermore. 

Dinah sank into a chair, and fell to examining the hue and 
texture of the ribbon, curiosity, for the moment outbalancing cold 
repugnance. It was of foreign make, she saw; a relic, doubtless, 
of those days when two people, who might have suited each other ^ 
used to meet, to exchange furtive 'whispers in a Paris salon; a 
memento sufficiently precious to have survived through a decade 
of divided years, and to become the object of a keenly contested 
wager between them now. 

‘‘ Tell your husband,” with fresh purport Linda’s message 
returned to her, “ that he has won, and 1 am bankrupt.” 

She put back the enclosures in their cover, not suffering herself 
to smell the flowers’ languid odor, or look again on the one word 
whose import her jealousy divined and magnified. Then, just as 
she had hidden the letter away in a secret drawer of her dressing- 
case, the first dinner-bell was set ringing, and Dinah bethought 
her that, if she would carry out Gaston’s parting request, she 
must go into the dining-room, alone. 

No further shirking of that ‘‘ alone ” was practicable. On 
former occasions she had quietly contrived to absent herself from 
the public table when Gaston dined abroad, pleading headaches 
for heartaches, preferring tea to food, ringing the changes by 
which neglected wives, when they have common sense, keep their 
own sad counsel apart from the world. The time was i)ast for 
deceits now, either towards herself, or others. Dinner, to-day, 
like all her future dinners, for twenty or thirty years, say, must, 
perforce, be eaten without Gaston. 

To drift — here, in truth, seemed that which lay befoie her! 
To drift! At the present moment to speculate on possible effects 
> — to vacillate over a tucker, a locket, the color of one’s dinner- 
dress. A despairing human soul, perplexed over the rival merits 
of pink, white, or blue; a soul which, when love shone on it, had 
less than its feminine share of toilet vanity! As poor Dinah 
hesitated, her thoughts travelled back, by no road she knew, to 
Saturday’s rose-show, her first meeting with Rex Basire, her 
earliest distinct doubt of Gaston’s truthfulness. She decided to 
put on the black dress she wore that day, to pin a white rose, 
Gaston’s flower by predilection, in her hair, to wear a silver 


ONE WORD, 


313 


bracelet, Gaston’s first present after their marriage, on her wrist. 

How fair, how marvellously fair she was! The fact struck 
Dinah with a sense of newness as she stood, waiting for the last 
dinner-bell before her glass. Surely her looks, joined to such 
lavish love as she had given, might have contented the heart, the 
pride of the most exacting husband. If she had only had more 
mind. There was the flaw, the fatal deficiency to a man with 
whom mind was all in all, like Gaston Arbuthnot. 

She scrutinized the moulding of her temples, the lines of her 
perfectly cut head. In outward proportion she thought there 
was not much amiss. It must be the quality of the brain that 
was poor. There must be an inherited peasant slowness, a 
bluntness of perception or wit, something yv\i\ch disabled her from 
holding her own against the taught graces, the pliant, inexhaustible 
lightness of such an one as Linda Thorne. She might, if lowlier 
duties, had fallen to her have been clever enough to manage a 
house, to look after her husband’s interests, to bring up children. 
Amongst ladies and gentlemen — oh the bitterness with which she 
uttered the titles of gentility half aloud— amongst ladies and 
gentlemen she had no place, no chance. 

And in her nature, not thoroughly sounded as yet, but of 
whose depths the last few days had vaguely informed her — in her 
innermost nature were evil things that a constant pressure of 
temptation might bring to the surface. She was not like 
Geoffrey. No ministering to others could fill her life, at any 
rate not while she was young, while the cry for love had the 
double keenness of a physical and of a moral want. If she con- 
tinued a hanger-on of the world that Gaston loved — “ someone 
who must be asked, don’t you know, occasionally, on suffer^ 
ance,” — she would, one day, meet with homage, differently 
offered, and from a different man to Rex Basire. Was she sure 
that gratitude would not be awakened in her, then vanity ? Was 
she sure she might not decline, step by step, to the condition of 
that most pitiable among women — a wife, true to the cold letter of 
her fealty, who has at once outlived her husband's affection and 
the stings of her own self-contempt ? 

Dinah started, guiltily, as the sharp clang of the dinner-bell 
roused her into final action. It took a good many minutes before 
she could recover sufficiently to face the ordeal that lay before 
her. At last, arming herself by the reflection that, henceforth 
all life’s common actions must be gone through alone, and under 


314 


A Gin TON GIRL, 


a certain cloud of suspicion, she made her way to the dining-room. 
After a moment’s trembling heartsickness, she pushed back one of 
the double-doors — entered. 

A hush, an involuntary suspension of knife and fork greeted 
her. The light through a western window fell full upon her 
golden head. The whiteness of her throat and hands was thrown 
into brilliant relief by the sombre dress she wore. 

“ A saint of Holman Hunt’s — Early manner,” thought a high- 
church curate, away bn his four- weeks’ holiday; and who never 
would know more of Dinah than the large sad eyes, the lips’ car- 
nation, the nimbus of sunlight colored hair. 

‘‘ Can the complexion be absolutely real ? ” floated through the 
brain of more than one duly aged and authorized feminine critic. 

Miller, with his professional little run and smile, came forward. 
He ushered Dinah Arbuthnot to her place. 

‘‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot not expected, I believe ?” asked the 
host, as Dinah prepared to take her seat. 

“ No. Mr. Arbuthnot is dining at the Fort.” 

“ And Mr. Geoffrey will not return till late. Then I may b« 
allowed to fill this vacant chair ? Thank you, madame. I should 
not have ventured to place a stranger next Mrs. Arbuthnot with- 
out permission.” 

A minute later Dinah discovered — no stranger, but her hus- 
band’s friend. Lord Rex Basire at her side. 


CHAPTER XLIL 


EMANCIPATION. 

Dinah Abbuthnot’s face asked vividly for explanation. 

“ Made sure Arbutlmot would be here — that is to say, our 
Arbuthnot-’ — Lord Rex stammered; he showed embarrassment 
that sat on him oddly, as he apologized for his uninvited presence. 

The comings and goings of the Cambridge cousin are, natu- 
rally, beyond my powers of calculation ’’ 

Naturally,” echoed Dinah. She remembered, with a pang of 
self-reproach, what manner of errand kept Geoffrey absent. 

“ Strolled round here early — by accident, you know — thought 
I’d ask myself to dinner with your husband. Clean forgot, till 
Miller or some one put it into my head it was guest-night. That 
was half an hour ago. Ought to have started off, instanter, to 
Fort \Yilliam.” 

And why, pray, did you not do so ? ” 

Mrs. Arbuthnot, you can ask me ! ” 

Rex Basire’s tone adequately supplemented his words. And 
Dinah’s pulse quickened. She was on the threshold, she re- 
membered, of a new, an emancipated life. A wife who lives apart 
from her husband must accept her position, grow used to many 
things, to every complexion of whisper among the rest. That is 
the world’s immutable sentence. Away from Gaston divorced 
from the arms which, during four years, had cradled her in warm 
safety — she must learn, like other unloved women, to rely on her 
own strength — her strength and the chivalry of all such knights- 
errant, such Rex Basires, as should cross her path ! 

About the chivalry more might have to be learnt, hereafter. 
Dinah realized, before the first step of her downward journey was 
taken, that her strength was weakness. She felt as though all 
eyes around the table watched her with suspicion, read her secret. 
Rex Basire’s tone of assured admiration brought the blood 
miserably, shamefully to her cheeks. 

He saw and misinterpreted the blush. 


316 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


‘‘ Thought, you know, as there was a rumor of the cousin’s 
absence, I should have a chance of getting next you.” 

“ You would have been better amused elsewhere, my lord. With 
Geff I can talk or be silent as I like. Geff does not mind.” 

Lord Kex on this, made some whispered hit at the “ model 
cousin’s” excellence. As he ate his half cold soup murmured 
comparisons fell from him as to the men who are made of flesh 
and blood, poor devils ! and the other men, too good for this 
world, who are made of ice, yes, ice, by Jove ! But he was not 
great at covert allusion. The metaphorical ice got mixed with 
the metaphorical flesh and blood : his nominatives were nowhere. 
Breaking down, rather ignominiously. Lord Rex smothered his 
failure under a capacious sigh. 

Dinah turned to him, with cheeks still burning. “ I am afraid 
I did not understand. Men of ice ! Men of flesh and blood ! Were 
you talking of Geff or of yourself, Lord Rex ? ” 

Despite her blush, tlie true eyes stopped him short, as they had 
so often done before. Ere Rex Basire had time to double back 
towards his starting-point there came an interruption — one of the 
trivial things not to be mentioned in heroic story, yet which do, 
ofttimes, determine the current of a human life. A plain little 
man, his large checked suit, his open Murray proclaiming the 
tourist, had during the past two minutes attentively watched Lord 
Rex from the other side the table. Upon hearing Dinah’s mention 
of the name, the stranger fidgeted with his knife and fork, cleared 
his throat, coughed. Finally, leaning forward with a bow, it was 
obvious that he expected, was eager for, aristocratic recognition. 

‘‘ Lord Rex Basire, if I mistake not ? ” 

‘‘ Sir ! You are politeness itself. But you have the better of 
me.” 

Rex Basire accorded his interrogator a blank and frozen stare. 

‘‘ On the top of the St. Gothard, Lord Rex. You were travelling 
with the Duchess. Her grace’s carriage broke down — something 
wrong with the linch-pin — and as I was in the region, botanizing, 
I had the honor of offering her grace mine. Your lordship will 
recollect ? ” 

“Her grace’s carriage is invariably breaking down. In- 
variably. Besides,” drawled liord Rex, putting up a ferocious 
pince nez, and resolute to nip renewal of acquaintance in the bud, 
“ we are not on the top of the St. Gothard now. Ah, Mrs. 
Arbuthnot,” he addressed Dinah in as low a tone as a man’s voice 


EMANCIPATION. 817 

can sink to without becoming an actual whisper, ‘‘ this makes up 
to me for a great deal I have suffered at your hands.” 

“By thiSy^’ said Dinah, whose courage was returning, “do you 
mean the cold soup we have eaten, or the colder fish to which they 
are helping us 

“ I mean the happiness of sitting beside you, of knowing I am 
so much forgiven that ” 

“ Her grace travelled on as far as Andermatt in the carriage 
it w^as my privilege to lend her. From Andermatt, if my memory 
serves me right ” 

“ Your memory is certain to serve you right, sir. The incident 
which I, it seems, have forgotten, was more than unimpor- 
tant.” 

Lord Rex’s manner was brutal; no other word would adequately 
describe it. The poor little tourist’s eyes dropped to his plate, 
his face turned scarlet. Dinah leaned forward on the instant. 
With the gentle womanliness which was her breeding, she address- 
ed him in her pleasant country voice: 

“ My husband and I met with just the same kind of accident, 
once. Our carriage broke down, and we had to spend six hours, 
in wet and darkness, between Berne and Yevey. I should not 
have forgotten any one who had come to our help that night.” 

“Ah — you know Switzerland, madam ? Then may I ask,” the 
tourist gave a piteous glance tow^ards Lord Rex, “ if you take an 
interest in the Alpine flora ? I have only time to pursue such 
things during my holidays.” It is possible he pronounced the 
word without its aspirate. “But botany is my hobby; I get 
plants enough in my five w^eeks to fill my leisure for the rest of 
the year. How in that very region you speak of, I have found two 
or three specimens that are unique. If you will allow me to 
enumerate the Latin names, madam. ...” 

And so on, and so on. The poor man was one of nature’s 
choicest bores. His information was stale, his manner of impart- 
ing it prosy; his blindness to the suffering he inflicted, absolute. 
Dinah’s face wore a look of kindly interest through everything. 
Occasionally (Lord Rex all but groaning aloud over his .wasted 
opportunities) she would strike in with some question calculated 
to start the narration afresh on new tracks, on new prosiness if, 
peradventure he chanced to lag. 

She even bowled courteously to him on leaving the table d’hote: 
an example not followed by Lord Rex. 


318 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


“ A charming dinner, on my word ! ’’ So he broke forth, the 
moment he found himself beside Dinah in the welcome freshness 
of the garden. May I ask, Mrs. Arbuthnot, what inhuman whim 
made you talk to that wretched snob ? 

Rex Basire’s voice went beycnd the limits of petulance. 

“ Why a snob asked Dinah meekly, “you know I can never 
catch the inner meaning of these names.’’ 

“ Why ? Because he was a snob. ‘ Her grace’s carriage bi’oke 
down on the top of the St. Glothard; he had the privilege of 
offering his.’ What the dickens did that matter to me ? ‘ Her 
grace travelled as far as Anderniatt in his carriage.’ What the 
dickens did that matter to him ? ’ 

“ Only this, perhaps— that her grace’s misadventure obliged the 
snob to go on foot.” 

“ Mrs. Arbuthnot! — I never expect a direct answer from any 
woman,” Lord Rex exclaimed with scarcely suppressed temper; 
“ still I should like to know why during a mortal three quarters 
of an hour you allowed that little wretch to talk to you? ” 

She paused. A shade of deepened color touched her cheek. 
“ The wretch was intelligent, Lord Rex.” {Aye, and opportune! 
This was a subtle parenthesis, put in by Dinah’s conscience.) “ I 
don’t understand Alpine plants, but I like to hear a good deal 
our tourist said about them.” 

“ The’obby he pursues during his ’olidays,” observed Lord Rex 
humorously. 

Dinah turned swiftly round. A streak of sunset goldened her 
hair, and the delicate outlines of her face. She gave a look of 
farewell sincerity at Lord Rex Basire. 

“ Do you remember,” she asked him, “ a conversation you and 
I had on board the Princei^s ? It was just after my husband and 
the Thornes had landed at Alderney.” 

Yes, Lord Rex remembered. He was not likely — this, with a 
sigh — to forget any hour or place in which he had had the good 
fortune to find himself alone with Mrs. Arbuthnot. 

“ We spoke about class distinctions. I believe you called me a 
Conservative. Certainly you told me you were the most out-and- 
out demagogue in England. You were all for fraternity. Lord 
Rex, ^ Gardener Adam and his wife, and that sort of thing.’ 
Labor was the universal purchase-money. Dukes and earls had 
best go back to the place from whence they came. Well, — 
you meant none of this.” 


EMANCIPATION. 


319 


Lord Rex winced. ‘‘ Unfair on a fellow,” he observed, ^‘to be 
thus taken, an pied de la lettre, and ” 

“You must speak in English,” cried Dinah. “I have not 
French enough to understand your meaning.” 

“My dear Mrs. Arbuthnot! A man may hold theories, — 
visions of an impracticable Utopia, don’t you know. . . cliarming — 
ahem! to air in exquisite company; impossible to carry out in 
this rough chaos of a world we live in.” 

Dinah stopped for a minute or more, sedately reflecting, before 
she answered: 

“ I think I understand. Socialistic opinions, if one is trying to 
make talk for a rather stupid woman at a picnic, may be well 
enough, especially if the rather stupid woman does not belong to 
one’s own station.” 

“Mrs. Arbuthnot! I protest ” 

“ The gardener Adam, of reality, is a snob. A wretch, bound of 
course to lend his carriage to her grace, in distress, so long as 
he has not the impertinence to talk of duchesses or linch-pins 
during the remainder of his days. I have gained a new bit of 
wisdom. Lord Rex Basire. It is not likely I shall meet you in 
England. If I do, I shall remember what you said to our poor 
botanist — ‘ We are not on the St. Gothard now.’ You might say, 
slaying me through a cruel double eye-glass, ‘ We are not in 
Guernsey now.’ Good-night, my lord.” 

She touched his hand. She passed away out of his life with a 
smile. Her step was light. The rose-tints of the sky lent a 
fictitious brilliancy to her face. Wonderful how that poor young 
woman, Mrs. Arbuthnot, kept up her spirits ! So opined feminine 
judges, looking mercifully down upon the events from the drawing- 
room windows of the hotel. And under the sad circumstances, — 
the husband’s indifference to her growing hourly more pointed — 
to be carried away like a girl, by this foolish little lord’s 
attention! But that is the nature of these piiik-and- white, 
yellow haired marionettes! The temperament, my dear madam, 
is not one that feels or sorrows. 

Dinah Arbuthnot walked quietly to her room, then rang the 
bell, and told the waiting-maid that she would require nothing 
further, and that no one need sit up for Mr. Arbuthnot. She 
changed her dress for a loose wrapper, rested herself during some 
minutes, and with her face hidden between her hands, strove to 
realize the altered condition of things which lay before her. 


820 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


It had been easy, an outlet to jealous anger, to declare, in the 
moment’s he »t, she would no longer live with Gaston Arbuthnoi. 
During dinner, though the strain was tense, there had been a 
certain excitement, a sense of perilous adventure, to keep her up. 
Now came blank reality. She must look at her position as a 
stranger would, from outside. If she purposed in good earnest to 
seek refuge with her Devonshire kinsfolk, she had best benefit 
by Geoffrey’s escort on Sunday, had best, wisely and soberly, be- 
gin to pack to-night. 

Well, reader, “ to pack,” however tumultuous one’s mental 
condit on, means — to use one’s arms, see to the folding of one’s 
latest intricate furbelows, make sure that one’s newest bonnet shall 
not be crushed. Dinah got through this part of her work well 
enough ; nay, isasmuch as packing brought her muscles into 
play, felt the better for it. Then came the bitter beginning of 
the end. She must sort her trinkets, must decide which things it 
was right to take with her into exile, which leave. 

Gaston was the most careless man living. The key of his 
dressing-case was in his wife’s hands, everything he owned of 
value in her keeping. It thus became needful, in looking over 
her‘own possessions, that she should take count of his. And in 
doing so their four years of married life returned, month by 
month, almost hour by hour before her. 

A legacy of two hundred pounds had come to Dinah from a well- 
to-do farmer uncle, a few days after her wedding. “ To much, 
rather, to give to the poor, not enough, certainly, to invest,” 
declared Gaston — they were at the time in Paris. “ We will go 
shares, my dear child. I will take one of the good uncle’s 
hundreds for cigarettes, and you shall have the other hundred for 
chiffons.” 

Dinah wanted no chiffons — at Gaston’s insistence, possessing 
more millinery already than she knew what to do with. So her 
hundred pounds were mainly spent in buying pretty things for 
her husband. Gaston was fonder of rings and pins than are most 
born Englishmen. He had also an innocent way of directing 
Dinah’s admiration to artistic trifles in the jewellers’ windows of 
the Palais Royal and the Boulevards — trifles which were tolerably 
sure to find their way to his own dressing-table before the next 
morning. 

Ah, their good laughs when these innocent ways became too 
hare-faced ! Ah, the golden Paris days, when each hour was 


EM A JSrCIPA TIOJSr, 


321 


sweeter than the last, when they used to jest together (little 
knowing) at the musty axiom which limits a pair of true lovers’ 
happiness to the shining of a single moon I 

All the happiness — on one side, all the love — was gone now, 
thought Dinah, as trinket after trinket, memorials, every one of 
them, passed through her fingers. She, who, in the bloom of 
hope, believed aU things, trusted all things, had become harsh, 
unrelenting, a woman bent, of her own free will, though it cost 
her her heart’s blood, upon leaving her husband’s side. And 
Gaston — nay, of him she w'ould think no further ill, to-night, at 
least ! The proofs — little needed — of his light faith she had locked 
away, witnesses against him until the last hour that both should 
live. But she would think no new evil of him, to-night. She 
would seek her pillow, leave the preparations for her journey as 
they stood. Midnight was now drawing near. To-morrow, she 
thought, when sleep should have renewed her strength, this be- 
ginning of her changed existence, this saying of “ mine ” and 
“ thine ” instead of “ ours,” might come easier. 

To-day was still to-day. They belonged, outwardly, in the 
world’s sight, to each other yet ! 

There on the bedroom mantelshelf was an unfinished model 
Gaston had made of her, a sketch which, had it reached marble, 
might some day have worked his way inside the walls of the 
Academy. Among the neat proprieties of her dressing-table were 
two of his modelling tools, not altogether innocent of clay. There 
lay a half burnt cigarette ... a glove that he had w'orn . . . Ah 
heaven! And, with this passionate affection at her heart, she 
was unloved of him, had no child with tiny tender clasp to make 
up to her for her husband’s coldness ! And she w^as still only a 
girl, in years; and life but yesterday, it seemed, was sweet . . . 

If Gaston, with clairvoyant power, could have seen her at this 
moment in her extremity of pain, doubt not that the couple of 
hilly miles between Fort William and Miller’s Hotel had proved 
an insufficient barrier to keep him from her side. Common men, 
how'ever, have common lights to guide them. They reap even as 
they sow. 

When twelve o’clock struck and Dinah’s aching head sank on 
its pillow, Gaston Arbuthnot, with unburthened conscience, w'as 
settling himself placidly down to poker — the little game of draw 
in which he had vouchsafed to act as Mentor to the youngsters of 
the Maltshire Koyals. 


CHAPTER XLIIL 


GEOFFBEr CALLS TO BE PAID. 

It wt^s a custom, dating further back than Andros Bartrand’s 
childhood, that the Seigneurs of Tiiitajeux should hold a stiff and 
formal levee on the first Saturday of every alternate month. 

The ceremony, shorn of its former old-world stiffness, lingered 
on, and to the feminine mind was one of the most popular Samian 
entertainments. For Andros Bartrand, with his fine manner, his 
handsome face, his learning, his temper, was scarcely less a favor- 
ite with the sex at fourscore than he had been in the flower of his 
age, half a century earlier. 

“ Will this generation of progress, will the coming democracy 
ever produce men of eighty like our Seigneur ? ” the Guernsey 
ladies. Conservative to a woman, would ask. 

And he who had argued that there may be higher ideals of an 
octogenarian than are comprised by culture, originality, vigorous 
health, and arrogant profile, and a courtly bow, would have stood 
poor chance of escaping without scar from their hands. 

“ The Seigneur grows robuster every year,” remarked Mrs. 
Verschoyle to Cassandra Tighe, on the afternoon of July the 
second. The ^‘Tintajeux levee ’’ had opened. The elder ladies 
were ranged along the row of white-and-gold armchairs that sur- 
rounded the drawing-room. ‘‘ Time stands still with Andros 
Bartrand. Look at him talking — flirting, I call it — with Rosie. 
The child declares, if the Seigneur would only ask her, she is quite 
prepared to answer ‘ Yes.’ ” 

“ What would Lord Rex Basire say to that ? ” whispered Cas- 
sandra, warming up as the faintest suggestion of a love-affair. 

Mrs. Verschoyle looked mournfully perplexed, the chronic state 
of her good, maternal, overburthened soul. 

Lord Rex Basire ? One certainly seems,” said poor Mrs. 
Verschoyle, inappositely, to have seen less of him since the 
picnic. But then w'e have no gentlemen to leave a card at the 
Fort! That is the worst of an unmarried colonel in a regiment. 


GEOFFREY CALLS TO BE PAID. 


S23 


One really can not do the polite thing. Does any one know, I 
wonder,’’ a faint pink blush sulfused the whiteness of Mrs. Yer- 
schoyle’s cheek as some misty sequence of ideas ran through her 
brain — “ does any one know if there is truth in this rumor of the 
Arbuthnot family leaving the island ? ” 

“I can give reliable information about one member of the 
Arbuthnot family,” cried the prettiest, least wise of the de Carte- 
rets. This young lady, in the absence of better amusement, had 
been listening to the exchange of confidences between her elders. 
^‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot leaves Guernsey to-morrow. I am sure 
of my facts, because papa went to inquire at Millers after a room 
for Fred. You know, Mrs. Yerschoyle, that we have had a tele- 
gram from Lloyd’s ? Fred will be home on Monday.” 

“ I hope your poor mother will get no shock when she sees 
him,” Mrs. Yerschoyle answered sadly. “ Not one young man in 
fifty brings back a constitution from India.” 

And Miller said the younger Mr. Arbuthnot’s room would 
be vacant to-morrow. I appreciated Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot highly 
at the subalterns’ picnic, and should like to have seen more of 
him, only Marjorie Bartrand would not let me! Yes, Miss 
Bartrand,” ran on Ada de Carteret guilelessly, but putting ad- 
ditional meaning in her tone as Marjorie came within earshot, 
‘‘ and — although this is not meant for you to hear — I can tell, by 
your face, that you are listening, that your conscience pricks 
you.” 

Listening! Aye, that was Marjorie Bartrand, in truth — out- 
wardly listening, with strained sense, to the even hum of small 
talk that filled the rooms, inwardly awaiting, with the keen 
expectancy that hardly needs the help of bodily hearing, for the 
step, the voice whose absence already made the world blank to 
her! 

“ I shall certainly not leave Guernsey without calling on the 
Seigneur — to be paid.” 

To the cruel wmrds, to such remote and slender hope of reconcil- 
iation as they might hold’ forth, Marjorie’s heart clung tenaciously. 
She was softer of manner to-day than was her w^ont, played her 
part of hostess with studied dutifulness towards her grandfather’s 
visitors. The annual Sunday School treat would come on next 
w^eek, said the rectoress of some remote country parish. Of 
course one might count on Marjorie Bartrand to lead the games ? 
Had the great St. liaurens scandal reached Tintajeux ? asked am 


B24 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


other. Maitre Giroflee and his wife, and the best church people 
in the parish, gone over to Salem because the rector had cut down 
their pew — good solid oak, it must be confessed worth so much a 
foot — ill making his chancel restorations ? 

Oh, with what weary patience the poor child listening to it all; 
making occasional random answer, when answer was needed! 
How utterly had her vivid child’s life lost its interest! How 
flat, how dissonant was every sound on this planet to Marjorie 
Bartrand so long as the footstep for whose approach she yearned 
was silent! 

‘‘ Why — witch! Your cheeks are as white as your gown,” re- 
marked the Reverend Andros, happening presently, to come 
across her. “ We must get our Cambridge Esculapius to prescribe 
for you. What is Arbuthnot doing with himself ? ” added the 
Seigneur, with a hard look at his granddaughter. “ We are short 
of the inferior sex to-day. Why is Arbuthnot not here to make 
himself useful among the tea-cups ? ” 

“ Afternoon parties are not much in my tutor’s ^ay. But I 
believe — yes,” faltered Marjorie, with one of her dark blushes — 
“I believe — at this moment — I see a figure like Mr. Arbuthnot’s 
crossing the moor. We will put a tea-cup in each of his hands, 
sir, as soon as we feel certain of having caught him.” 

She fled into the recess of a window in the smaller drawing- 
room. Standing there, shrouded by the lace draperies, she 
wondered if more than a dozen pair of eyes had noticed her change 
of color! She clenched her hands until the nails impressed her 
soft palm painfully. She essayed, with will, to keei^ her rebel 
cheeks from flaming, her lips from weakness. She marvelled by 
what art she could render her manner passive — Marjorie Bartrand 
who during her seventeen years of life had, at every pass, gone 
aggressively to the fore, for good or for evil — on her tutor’s en- 
trance! 

His ring came at the front-door bell. “ Mr. Geoffrey Arbuth- 
iiot,” was ceremoniously announced by Sylvestre. The French 
windows stood open. With the occult sixth sense which, in lovers, 
supplements the ordinary ones of sight and hearing, Marjorie 
divined that Geoffrey walked at once to the lawn in search of the 
Seigneur. After a time she could hear his voice — excellent spirits 
Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot seemed to be in — as he made his way 
through the crowded outer rpom. She caught the laughter of 
Ada de Carteret, the thin gay tones of Rosie Yerschoyle. A 


GEOFFBEY CALLS TO BE PAID. 


825 


sharp cross fire of raillery was being levelled against Geoffrey on 
the subject of his abrupt departure. Marjorie could detect and 
misconstrue the coolness with which he turned this raillery aside. 
By-and-by came a new excitement. The Maltshire dandies were 
arriving in force, and in the general flutter which ensued upon 
this important crisis no single voice was longer distinguishable. 
Marjorie’s pulse went quicker. She knew that her time had 
come. Three or four seconds passed breathlessly, than a hand 
drew back the curtain behind which she was half concealed. 
Geoffrey Arbuthnot stood beside her. 

“ I have kept my word. I am here to wish you and the 
Seigneur good-bye.” His composed speech stirred every fibre of 
Marjorie’s repentant, passionate heart. It is a surprise,” Geff 
added, “ to find half the Guernsey world at Tintajeux Manoir. 
But I hope. Miss Bartrand, you can sx^are me five minutes’ quiet 
talk?” 

Marjorie, on this, had no choice but to look up at him. Tears, 
despite pride, despite principle, were in her eyes. 

” To say good-bye! ” she repeated, holding out her hand; then, 
with cheeks going from rosy red to white, shrinking back ere he 
could grasp it. “ I — I never thought you could be so cruel.” 

So the girl cared something for him, after all, thought Geoffrey. 
She would brush a tear away to-morrow, perhaps, when those 
who travel by land or water were courteously alluded to by old 
Andros in the Litany, would regret him a little, as long as this 
summer’s roses lasted. She would remember him until her heart, 
if heart she possessed, should be touched in earnest. No more 
than this. It was not her time to love, x)oor Marjorie! And he 
. . . must part from her as a strong man ought; must say this 
is,” not this might have been.” There should be neither re- 
crimination nor bitterness. A touch of the sunburnt chiselled 
hand, a look into the eyes which had wounded him, as children 
wound, from ignorance, and then a brave and loyal farewell, this 
time a final one. 

A table on which lay books and photographs stood at hand 
Geoffrey took up a photograph of the Gouliots, Sark. Some glis- 
tening boulders, a fishing-net stretched on the shingle, a break of 
wave. How indelibly the bit of sun-etching transferred itself to 
his brain’s tablets! How often, in dull future hours, would those 
boulders, that break of wave, stand out in crisp relief before Geff’s 
memory ? 


326 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


‘‘Yes.’^ He spoke in a ke}^ that only Marjorie could hear. 
‘‘For just five minutes I should like to claim you. When I was 
at Tintajeux the day before yesterday, I was atrociously churlish 
to you, Miss Bartrand. I have been brought to see it since. 
Will you accept my apology ? ” 

Geoffrey had been “brought to see his churlishness! Then 
he held at nought her offer of truce — the word it had cost her 
pride so dear to write! He offered her this cutting rejoinder, an 
apology! 

“ You are hard upon me, Mr. Arbuthnot.” There was a piteous 
deprecation in her voice. “ When you were my master, I used to 
think you severe ; but that w^as the worst. I believed you to be 
human. ” 

“I’m afraid I am very human.” Geoffrey took up a fresh 
photograph; he examined it at a curiously short-sighted focus. 
“So human,” he added, softening, “ that I have not altogether 
given up the hope of your some day writing to me.” 

“A formal set letter, do you mean ?” 

“A letter,” said Geff, very low, “in which no thought of the 
Tintajeux acres has place.” 

For a moment her face showed one of its old bright flashes. In 
the world of story-books it had ever been Marjorie’s pleasure to 
scoff at the frail impediments, arising frorn the necessity of a third 
volume, which keeps true lovers apart. Should paltry reserve — 
the thought came upon her abruptly — should schoolgirl cowardice 
divide her, as though three hundred pages of “ copy ” depended 
upon the quarrel, from Geoffrey ? 

“ I don’t know what you would have me say. I can’t see w^hy 
you should be off so quick! I tried — I hoped ” 

But while the monosyllables came haltingly from Marjorie’s 
tongue, a stir had arisen in the larger drawing-room. It was 
plain that a group of people, young men and maidens taking 
counsel together in a corner, were bent on some kind of action. 
Their projects matured quickly. Kosie Verschoyle shot a beseech- 
ing glance at old Andros as she went through a meaning panto- 
mime of the waltz step. Little Oscar Jones, with the air of a man 
upon whom rests an onerous embassy, made his way across both 
rooms to Marjorie. 

“Ten thousand pardons, Miss Bartrand! Would not intrude 
for the world on a tete-a-tete. Fact is, you see, some of them 
want to get up a dance on the lawn.” 


GEOFBBET CALLS TO BE PAID, 


327 


“A dance! Absurdity! ” cried Marjorie, bestowing on him an 
ultra Bartrand look; then, recollecting their position as ]:iostess 
and guest, I mean, would not tennis amuse you just as well ?” 
she observed, with show of interest. Or ask Gertrude de Car- 
teret to sing, or ” 

“But, dear Miss Bartrand, we all of us want to dance/’ persisted 
the handsome little lieutenant, with a smile that he had grounds 
for believing irresistible. “Miss Tighe volunteers to play for us 
beside an open window. Powerful backstairs interest is at this 
moment bearing down on the Seigneur. We only want an encour- 
aging word form you.” 

“ I never say encouraging words. It is too foolish,” cried Mar- 
jorie, detecting, in her misery, that Geoifrey showed signs of 
flight. “ To begin with, we have so few gentlemen.” 

“Few; why, there are five at least of ours. There is Mr. Geof- 
frey Arbuthnot . . . Ah ! going already ? Then we must reckon 
wfithout Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot. And it seems some of the 
clergy dance, a mild square dance, and ” 

“ Yes, yes, Marjorie! ” exclaimed a bevy of young girls, coming 
up and surrounding her like the chorus in an opera. “ It is use- 
less for you to be wise. Eosie has won the Seigneur to say yes. 
Miss Tighe is ready. The piano is on its journey to the window.” 

“ Will you be my partner for the first waltz, Miss Bartrand ? ” 
pleaded Oscar Jones. 

Now, at any prior moment of her life, Marjorie Bartrand, 
deficient neither in temper nor in courage, would thus attacked, 
have held her ground stoutly. But the girl saw, or fancied she 
saw, that Geoffrey was eager to get away. Her spirit w'as charged 
to overflowing. The eyes of half the people in the room were 
fixed upon her expectantly. Easier, she thought, before Geoffrey, 
before them all, to give a coldly assenting bow than trust her 
voice to speak ; so she gave it. 

Oscar Jones looked radiant. “ Thank you, awTully, Miss Bart- 
rand. This is a victory worth scoring. I will just go and start 
the corps de ballet, ask the orchestra to strike up some gay old 
waltz tune, and return to you.” 

The corps de ballet was already setting towards the lawn. 
Cassandra Tighe had taken her place at the piano beside an open 
window. Geoffrey Arbuthnot and Marjorie, with youth, with love, 
with the heaviness of parting at their hearts, were alone. But 
their good chance was gone. The thread had snapped which 


328 


A Gin TON GIBL, 

bound together poor Marjorie’s monosyllables Two minutes 
later, .she would be treading a waltz measure, the arm of Mr. 
Oscar Jones round her waist. And Geff (the conqueror, to whom 
all, in whitest, girlish faith, had been conceded) felt his blood re- 
bel. He took the reprisals of his nobler sex, offered prompt, 
italicized repetition of the crushing word, apology, 

‘‘ You have accepted mine, have you not. Miss Bartrand ? He 
held his hand out, steadily, for a last good-bye.” 

I accept the blame you choose to force on me,” said Marjorie, 
turning aside her face. 

Cold, fettered, was the speech of both. Still, in this interval 
there was an encounter of pulses. Their hands had met ; the 
farewell pressure was a lingering one. Propinquity — unspiritual 
god of youthful lovers — might, even at this supreme moment, 
have set things straight, had not old Andros Bartrand passed by, 
looked at them , smiled. 

Marjorie moved away, with a start. She felt as much divided 
from her sweetheart as though the Channel already rolled between 
them. 

“ What is this I hear about your leaving us, Arbuthnot. The 
little witch has been plaguing you, I suspect, with her false quan- 
tities. My dear sir, not one in a thousand of the sex, has an ear. 
Music is an art in which they have had more opportunities than 
we, and there has never been even a third-rate female composer. 
You are going to England next week ? To-morrow ! Nay, if it is 
to be to-morrow we must have business talk to together. Come with 
me, Arbuthnot, to the library.” 

The situation was a crucial one for Marjorie Bartrand. Scarcely 
had Geoffrey gone away with the Seigneur — her heart told her, 
‘Ho be paid — ” before a dapper figure tripped, alertly across the 
rooms. The well satisfied voice of little Oscar Jones reminded 
her that the first waltz was beginning, that they were engaged to 
dance it together. Her cheeks tingled with the sense of her 
humiliation and of her helplessness. 

Oscar was in high spirits. ‘‘ Coach, gone, I suppose ? Dancing 
not much in Mr. Geoffrey ArbuhthoCs line. Confess now. Miss 
Bartrand ” — by this time they had reached the dancers on the 
lawn, Mr. Jones’s arm encircled the girl’s lithe slip of a waist — 
“ confess in your heart that you rate enjoyment higher than you 
do Euclid and Plato ? ” 


GEOFFREY CALLS TO BE PAID. 329 

% 

I do not understand your question. I cannot deal in gener- 
alities.” 

Marjorie Bartrand held herself as stiffly at bay from her partner 
as was possible. 

“ Well, you’ll enjoy our dance, for instance, better than being 
shut up in a schoolroom over musty books and figure with Ar- 
buthnot ? ” 

“ I shall not enjoy it at all.” Without a second’s hesitation 
came the answer. “ Hostesses do not dance. See, there is Ada de 
Carteret standing out. Give me my freedom, pray, and ask her.’’ 

“ Your freedom — to go indoors, to ‘ work a last problem, write 
one Latin line,’ with Arbuthnot ? No, no. Miss Bartrand, you are 
the best dancer in Guernsey, and I don’t often get the chance of a 
waltz with you.” 

For Oscar Jones, like bigger men, had his vanities. The 
thought of cutting out Geoffrey Arbuthnot was tasteful to him. 
It may be added that, although Majorie’s tongue had not lost its 
sharpness, she was at this moment the sweetest-looking girl among 
the little crowd of dancers. The fire of strong emotion glittered 
in her large eyes. Her cheeks glowed damask. Her slim, white- 
clad figure showed up, in exceedingly agreeable relief, against the 
dense background of cedar-shaded lawn. 

That there was a certain dramatic interest connected with 
Geoffrey’s going seemed divined by all. The divination rose to a 
whisper among the non-dancers, elderly men and women who, 
gathering on the drawing-room steps, enjoyed the pleasant sensa- 
tions which bright sunshine, a garden of flowers, blue sky, and 
the sight of young people moving to dance-music, can scarce fail 
of producing. 

“ The child has a hectic flush that I do not like,” observed the 
plaintive voice of Mrs. Verschoyle. “ I wish any one dared ask the 
Seigneur if the mother died of heart-complaint. All that class of 
disease is hereditary, and poor Marjorie is so little looked after ! 
Not a creature to see whether she wears a thick sole or a thin 
one.” 

The Archdeaconess was standing close at hand, looking on at 
I the sunshine, the flowers, the lightly moving figures, through her 
accustomed smoke-colored medium. Madame Corbie turned round 
with slow severity on Mrs. Yerschoyle. 

“Marjorie Bartrand is not a girl to die of heart disease,” the 
assertion was made with such suggestive profundity that mild little 


330 


A GIBTON GIRL. 


Mrs. Verschoyle recoiled a step. ‘‘ Marjorie Bartrand wants the 
refined observance, the scrupulous exactness, the dignified correct- 
ness of manner which can only be obtained at school. None of 
your Girtons. None of your Newnhams.. A strictly disciplined 
school, such as prevailed in my young days, for the formation of 
character and the affections. I do not consider,” said Madame 
Corbie, “ that Marjorie’s study of Greek and mathematics has been 
to her advantage. 

‘^And yet Mr. Geoffrey A rbuthnot appears so charming, so 
thoroughly reliable.” 

Seeing her Kosie joyously dancing in the distance, Mrs. Yer- 
schoyle’s motherly heart was disposed towards optimism on most 
points. 

Has a word been uttered against the reliability of any member 
of the Arbuthnot family ? 

The question was an innocent one. And still did something 
in its tone, something in the added blankness of Mrs. Corbie’s 
smoke-colored gaze, seem to reduce the character of each of the 
Arbuthnot trio to a ghostly possibility. 

Marjorie and her partner floated past the window at this junc- 
ture. 

Give us one more round. Miss Tighe,” cried Oscar, in breath- 
less staccato. Never danced to such a splendid tune in my life ! ” 
Cassandra was laboring, hot with her exertions, througb Strauss’s 

First Set,” “ Les Hirondelles,” or some other long buried favor- 
ite of her youth. “Capital turf, capital music., a first-rate part- 
ner! If a dance like this,” he proceeded, “ could only last for- 
ever, Miss Bartrand! ” 

“ Thank Heaven it draws to an end,” said Marjorie, in a voice 
of steel . 

A hundred yards distant, across velvet lawns, and beds of flower 
bloom, she could discern the figure of Geoffrey Arbuthnot. He 
walked away, firm of tread, erect of head, from the acres of 
Tintajeax and from her. And her partner’s arm clasped her waist, 
her steps twirled lightly. She was hostess of the party, must go 
through other dances, must entertain the Seigneur’s guests to the 
end. 

From that time forth Marjorie knew that she could never more 
feel as a girl feels, never enjoy with a girl’s enjoyment. She would 
be a woman, with the bitter taste of grown up life in her mouth, 
from this hour onward till she died. 


CHAPTER XLiy. 


KISMET. 

To a naturally industrious man these islands would be the 
mischief.” The characteristic remark came from Gaston, who 
was entering his wife’s sitting-room just about the hour when 
Geoffrey quitted Tintajeux. “Yes, Mrs. Arbuthnot — these bach- 
elor breakfasts, these picnics, these summer nights given up to 
card playing, might well dispatch many an excellent fellow along 
the road to ruin. Happily,” said Gaston, “ I have the capacity 
for large waste of time. I am in no sense of the word an excel- 
lent fellow.” 

His tone was blithe; the fact of his calling Dinah “ Mrs. 
Arbuthnot,” showed a willingness to meet contingent domestic 
trouble with good temper. Stooping down, Gaston Arbuthnot 
snatched a kiss from his wife’s pale lips, he pressed her drooping 
golden head between his hands. Dinah wavered not in her 
resolves. His caresses were sweet to her as ever. But was not 
the dearness of this man’s presence her danger— that which 
should nerve her in righteous sternness towards herself, and 
him. 

“ Xo kiss for me, my darling! And pale cheeks again, — 
swollen eyes! Dinah, you are ill. Something in the place really 
disagrees with you. We will leave it. You cannot stand the 
climate. I half believe I want a change of air myself.” 

Sinking down in an American rocking-chair, the easiest loca- 
tion the room possessed, Gaston Arbuthnot propelled himself to 
and fro until he reached a point at which his heels were on a level 
with his breast. He rested the tips of his boots on the corner of 
an adjacent couch, he folded his arms in an attitude of leisurely 
repose upon his breast. Then, the primary point of comfort ex- 
haustively seen to, he looked, with closer heed than he had yet 
bestowed upon her, at his wife. 

Dinah was dressed in a dark travelling serge. Her hair was 
brushed back tightly from her temples. Her face was bloodless, 


332 


J QUIT ON GIRL, 


the outline of her delicate features blurred by a night of tears. 
It was impossible for her to be unlovely, even with pink eyelids 
and swollen lips. (If Gaston Arbuthiiot’s chisel could have com- 
passed the tragic, how exquisite a Niobe had lain, here, to his 
hand!) It was impossible, I say, fur Dinah to be unlovely. She 
seemed transformed, rather — a woman of harder, colder texture 
than her old self. When at length she raised her head slowly, the 
eyes that looked her husband through and through were fraught 
with an expression that his soul knew not. 

‘‘ I want change, you tell me, Gaston and that’s true. We 
want change, both of us.” 

“ Oh, I was not in earnest about myself,” said Gaston, a little 
uneasily. As far as health goes, the place suits me well enough- 
Only one positively cannot work here I Now, look how this week 
has gone ! ” He took a note-book from his breast pocket, he turned 
over page after page with a marked abandonment of his first 
sprightly manner, “ This week, too, w'hen I was to have got on 
with your bust, to have begun I don’t know how much besides. 
Where are you, by-the-bye, Dinah — I mean, where is your model ? 
There is a tidy look one dosen’t like about the room.” 

‘‘ The model is on the top shelf in your w'orking place. Although 
you don’t like tidiness, I have been putting everything as straight 
as I could it to-day.” 

Like the good forgiving girl that you are ! My dear child, I 
confess I have idled through this week disgracefully. Not to speak 
of yesterday’s dinner, of the old Colonel’s breakfast, of the best 
hours wasted — those wretched cards again — to-day, there was the 
initial mistake of being left behind in Alderney.” 

“ You were left behind there, I think, for your own pleasure ? ” 

‘‘ I am not so sure of that. The scheme, any way, did not turn 
out a success. Max Grimsby is the best fellow living — but one- 
ideaed. You cannot get him to move, save in a circle. He is 
tethered to Max Grimsby’s pictures. If the sun had shone he 
w^ould have taken me round, among rocks and places, to ‘ verify ’ 
his sketches, as he says, by nature. There was a most disgusting 
fog. I could be taken nowhere. I bored myself to extinction in 
Alderney. I ” 

“ Gaston,” exclaimed Dinah, fierily, ‘‘ don’t say things of this 
kiud, if you please. The time is past for them. I know about 
the wager you had with Mrs. Thorne before you left the 
Steamer,” 


KISMET. 


333 


Then you know about a very foolish matter/’ Gaston spoke 
with prompt self-control, although he reddened. ‘‘You have 
certainly been tidying with a vengeance, my love,” he went on, 
looking round him. “ I miss a dozen landmarks. What has 
become of my own priceless portraits ? ” Wherever they lived poor 
Dinah loved to hang Gaston’s three or four latest photogra,phs up- 
on the walls of her sitting-room. “ I do not see your embroidery 
frame, or ” 

“ Yes,” she again interrupted. I know about Mrs. Thorne’s 
wager, about everything. It is a relief to speak plain, at last. I 
have known, for a good long time past, that you deceived me.” 

Down came Gaston Arbuthnot’s feet to their normal level. 
Away flew all his assumption of serenity. A couple of quick 
strides brought him across the room. 

“ If you are bent on having one of our wretched scenes, Dinah, 
look, pray, to your language, as far as I am concerned. Say what 
you choose about Mrs. Thorne, if it gives you pleasure. Say what 
you like, of course, about yourself. Don’t use disagreeable 
expressions when you speak of me ! I’m the kind of conceited 
fellow whose love really won’t stand rough usage. My love for 
you is the best possession I have. I don’t want to risk my best 
possession. You understand ? ” 

No she did not, that was the worst oi. it. She could not see 
that her strong direct nature, craving and athirst for affection, 
imposed a strain beyond endurance upon a temperament at once 
ease-loving and volatile like Gaston’s. 

“ I have never deceived you, as far as I can remember, Dinah. 
I have not sufficient energy of character, I should imagine, to be 
deceitful.” 

“ No ? We may have different notions of deceit, perhaps.” 

“ One may deviate, now and then, from veracity,” said Gaston 
recovering his good humor. “ Suppressions of fact, in minor 
matters, are forced upon us all. The man would be wretch, not 
fit for civilized society, who should for ever blurt out what he 
considered truth, regardless of the feelings he hurt, the toes he 
trod upon.” 

For instance — to speak of something I understand — if you had 
gone to Mrs. Thorne’s house after a mess dinner it would be 
forced on you not to tell me of it next morning ? ” 

“ To Mrs. Thorne’s house . . . after a mess dinner ! Such an 
unimportant thing may have happened once— twice, perhaps. 


334 


A GIRT ON GIRL. 


during the weeks we have been here. But did I not mention it ? 
Well, then, I do so now and ask forgiveness,’* resting his hand 
upon her shoulder, “ for the heinousness of my crime.” 

‘‘ And your wager — was that, too, unimportant ? Your wager, 
made at a time when my heart was breaking ! And the feelings 

with which Linda Thorne regards your winning it ” Dinah’s 

voice choked. 

Gaston Arbuthnot was, habitually, a man of mild speech. His 
most familiar men friends had never heard an English expletive 
escape him. When he was strongly moved his tongue went back, 
instinctively, to the language of his youth. And he vras moved 
to sudden and keen anger at this moment. Three or four French 
expressions, fortunately not understanded of his wife, rolled from 
his lips. 

You make me detest the sound of Linda Thorne’s name. But 
take care — take care, in this matter of hating, that you do not 
force me farther than you intend.” 

I would rather you hated than tolerated me,” cried Dinah, 
her tear-worn eyes looking bravely up into Arbuthnot’ s face. 

Some new note in her voice startled him. It was a note, 
Gaston Arbuthnot felt, that might well prove the prelude to dan- 
gerous self-assertion. Was a tu quoque possible ? 

“You do not wish me to be tolerant. The husband of any 
excessively pretty woman must be so, whether he will or not. 
Now yesterday — suppose the medal reversed, Dinah, that I begin 
to cross-question you — how did you spend your afternoon, yester- 
day ? You forget. Let me refresh your memory. With whom 
were you walking down the High street, towards four o’clock, in 
the dove-colored dress I invented for you, the Gainsborough hat, 
the cambric collar ? ” 

“I am not jesting, though you are.” Dinah started to her 
feet, her eyes were level with her husband’s. “ Geoffrey came 
in after you had gone away ; I was idle and dull as usual, and 
Geff asked me to carry some fruit and flowers to the hospital. 
The walk did me good. We visited a Devonshire sailor-lad — 
like one of my own people, he seemed to me — and I was able to 
talk with him, the old country talk I love so well. And after- 
wards, coming back — perhaps with my heart a little lightened — I 
met . . . your friend.” 

“ Poor, ill-fated Linda Thorne ?” 

‘‘ And everything went dark again. It was then I heard about 


KISMET. 


835 


your bet, how you had won, how Mrs. Thorne was bankrupt! 
Mrs. Thorne had made her way into the parlor while I was out. 
Your winnings were left for you by her own hand. Gaston, I 
found them! ” 

“The situation, my dear girl, grows poignant. You found 
them ! ” 

Gaston Arbuthnot checked himself. The dimensions of this 
domestic tragedy — this storm of wifely passion over a pair of 
iron-gray gloves — overcame him with a fatal sense of the ridicu- 
lous. 

Dinah saw that he repressed a smile. Her righteous anger 
waxed hotter. 

“ And I intend to keep them until I die. If ... I mean when 
you see Mrs. Thorne, you can tell her so.” 

“ I will do nothing of the sort,” said Arbuthnot, thoroughly 
incensed at last. “ This constant Inquisition business grows 
unbearable ! There will be no living with you, Dinah, if you go 
on nursing these puerile, there childish jealousies. I would no 
more offer an impertinence to Mrs. Thorne than to any other lady 
of my acquaintance. You must learn to be reasonable.” 

“ Must I ? I have tried to learn much the last few' days with- 
out success. It is because I can’t learn, because I am ignorant” 
— her voice had growm hoarse, her eyes dilated — “ that I shall go 
away.” 

“ We can go as soon as you like; I have told you so already,” 
said Gaston coldly. “ We can go the beginning of next week, if 
you choose. You would not object very much to my leaving cards 
on the few people who have been civil to me ? ” 

I w'ould like to go to-morrow, if — if you will give me money 
enough for the journey. Geff will be crossing. He can see me 
as far as Southampton. After that, I can easily make my way 
on to Tavistock Moor ” 

“ You — alone ? ” 

“ Why not? In the old days, before I married, I needed no 
looking after.” 

‘‘And I am to follow with the luggage,” suggested Mr. Arbuth- 
not. “ You are quite sure there is room on Tavistock Moor for 
such luggage as ours ? ” 

But his tone was doubtful. Less and less could he understand 
the look, yearning yet steadfast, that encountered him from his 
wife’s eyes. 


336 


A GIB TON GIBL, 


‘‘ I will take my luggage with me. As near as might be, I have 
tried to divide things. I have put all belonging to you in order, 
Gaston, as you will find.” 

You want to visit your people without me? Say it out!” 
Gaston Arbuthnot’s color heightened. “ This is rough — harder 
punishment than I deserve, and a risky experiment! Think it 
over twice. Tve been in the world thirty years, Dinah, and have 
seen somewhat Of most things. I have never seen any good come 
of man and wife trying their hand at these little imitation 
divorces.” 

I cannot live up to your life,” answered Dinah unshrinkingly. 
“ I cannot understand you, or your friends, or the feelings you 
have for each other. If I stayed, I might grow myself to be — 
well, something I don’t care to think of. I was meant for the 
ways of common working people. It suits me to be told things 
plain and straightforward, to keep to my duty, to find my happi- 
ness there.” 

“ My poor Dinah ! Have you not always kept to duty ? ” For 
once in his life Gaston Arbuthnot spoke from impulse. 

Up to this time, because my heart has been full. I have 
loved you so much . . . there has been no room for any feeling 
but love ! This could not last forever, and you always away, and 
others — ladies born and educated — not ashamed to take you from 
me. I might grow hard. I might grow vain — worse! Yes, Gas- 
ton, down in my heart I feel all this is possible. And so, if you 
please ” 

“ Don’t hesitate. Let everything be absolutely clear between 
us.” 

“ I will go home. My father’s sisters, I know, would be willing 
to take me in while they live, and I can work at my trade as I 
used — of course, if you will give me leave.” 

Gaston Arbuthnot stood for a few seconds motionless. Then, 
without a word, he walked to the farthest end of the room. He 
stood, gazing upon some local oil painting of an impossible First 
Yapoleon, mounted on a still more impossible charger, as intently 
as though he gazed upon one of Kaphael’s masterpieces. Let 
anger, wounded pride — ah, more dreaded than either, let easy ac- 
quiescence be on her husband’s face, Dinah could see it not! 

She waited for him to speak, with the tension of nerves that is 
a bodily pain ; hoping nothing — the time for hope was past — fear- 
ing only lest, under the string of her proposal, he should tell her 


KISMET, 337 

that he no longer loved her. The truth itself had, in that moment, 
seemed small beside the possibility of his confessing it. 

But Gaston Arbuthnot was not a man of coarse or cruel words. 

“ I never looked for such a scene — I am not good at these high 
passions! Your veliemence forces me into the sort of position I 
detest. I have told you often, Dinah, that in everything,” — he 
leaned sidewards, as though seeking a point whence the impossible 
Napoleon might be more advantageously viewed — “in every- 
thing I am a light weight. No use asking from me the feats of an 
athlete. In life, I walk quietly. In art. I can produce nothing 
bitter or intenser than I experience in life. I am, what you would 
call, poor all round.” 

“ Poor — in feeling, most of all,” said Dinah with irrepressible 
bitterness. 

In the constant exhibition of feeling, you mean, in reitera- 
tions of ‘I love you.’ ” Gaston turned, having got thus far; he 
walked back to her with marked deliberation. In tne art of 
quarrelling about nothing— in showy expenditure of emotion on 
trifles . . . emotion of which I take it, only a limited quantity is 
dealt to each of us, and which we should store up for large occa- 
sions — in capacity of this kind I am doubtless poor. If I were 
a moral nonentity, Dinah, no human heart in my breast at all, it 
would seem strange, after four years’ companionship, close as 
ours, that you should love me still! ” 

There was an inflexion in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice that over- 
stepped the line of tenderness. His face, though it was calm, wore 
an unwonted flush. To Dinah, burning with passionate sense of 
injury, the very reasonableness of his speech was an offence. To 
Dinah his quiet pleading seemed fine words — altogether beside the 
present grave issue of their lives. 

‘‘Love! Ah, I love you, well as ever, to my misfortune! I 
shall love you till my death. Do we measure love out by the 
meagre quantity of it we get in return ? ” 

“ And loving me, after this strong fashion, you desire that we 
should spend our lives apart ? You tempt me to say a cutting 
thing,” broke forth Gaston with warmth, “ yet I believe it to be 
a true one. A man had better be loved less, Dinah, and that his 
Wife should remain contentedly at his side.” 

“No doubt of it. If you had married an educated woman you 
might have been happy with her — according to your notions of 


338 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


happiness. But there’s no going back on that, now; I exist, you 
see.” 

‘‘Yes, Dinah, you exist.” 

“ And I am two-and-twenty. And since we came to this place, 
I scarce know why, I have awakened. I see my ignorance. I 
know that I want more than I used to want in life. Gaston — I 
cannot fall asleep again. If you let me return among my own 
people I shall take to their plain country ways in time — perhaps 
shall find a little peace. At least I shall have work, real work, 
such as I was brought up to. I could never plod, patiently, at 
cross-stitch flowers for days and days together as I have done. And 
I can never rise to being a lady, as a week ago I thought I might.” 

“ Then the only outlook would seem to be Tavistock Moor. It 
is not a brilliant one for either of us — for. myself, in particular.” 
Turning away from her, Gaston took up his hat, he moved aim- 
lessly, and with a dull step, towards the door. “ If I do not cry 
‘ Kismet ’ with abetter grace,” he added, “ you must remember this 
sentence of widowerhood has come upon one suddenly, as I think 
without justice. But I shall not seek to stay you. I wish you to 
take back your freedom, unconditionally.” 

And so speaking, and while the coldness of death seized Dinah’s 
tortured heart, he left her. 


Chapter XLV. 


LABELLED AND CORDED. 

No argument can help us, Geff. A woman without a tithe of 
my poor wife’s noble qualities but possessing even a faint sense of 
the ridiculous, might be reached: Dinah, never ! Oh, it is the 
absurdity of the thing which humiliates one! A French song 
sung after a dinner-party . . . the winning of a pair of gloves!” 
said Gaston Arbuthnot bitterly. “ And to think, out of such 
materials, that the jealousy of the most impracticable woman 
living could evolve serious tragedy ! ” 

“ Tragedy,” returned Geff, “ of which the fifth act is, as yet, 
unconditioned.” 

Dinner was over; a meal at which Dinah had not appeared. 
The Arbuthnot cousins, side by side, were pacing a remote walk 
of the hotel garden. And Geoffrey, little by little, had made out 
the truth in respect of Dinah’s crowning misery. With his heart 
sore as a brave man’s heart could be over keen personal disappoint- 
ment, Geoffrey knew that he must arbitrate between the two 
people who stood nearest to him on earth, and with whose lives 
his own by some fantastic stroke of destiny, seemed, for good and 
for evil, to be interwoven. 

“I don’t believe in rash judgments, formed when the blood is 
hot,” Avent on Gaston Arbuthnot, ‘‘ When Dinah burst upon 
me with this new proposal I felt as if ten years of my youth 
had been taken from me. My anger was at white heat, and if I 
had spoken as I felt . . . Well, I did not so speak. I accepted 
my fate with a decent show of self-command. Reviewing the 
position — yes, and remembering every word you have been saying, 
Geff — I believe it may be best for my poor Dinah to leave me, on 
probation. Let her stay for a couple of months with her people 

in Devonshire, see how things go on, and ” 

‘‘They will go on vilely! They will go from bad to worse,” 
Geoffrey was in no humor for putting ornamental polish on his 


340 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


words. ‘‘ When does good come from a tentative separation 
between man and wife ? ” 

“ Exactly what I said to Dinah. These little imitation divorces. 
I told her, are risky experiments. Impossible to make her hear 
me.” 

“ Your eloquence must have been at fault. You have had 
perfect happiness, Gaston— there is the truth! You have had 
such a lot as does not fall to one man in a million, and you have 
grown careless of it.’’ 

Geoffrey’s voice was set in a lower key than usual. Glancing 
round at him, Gaston surprised an expression on the strong 
features, a glow in the dark eyes that he remembered. Not 
wholly unlike this did Geff look on the late June evening when 
he came, four years ago, to his rooms in Jesus, and congratulated 
him, Gaston, on his engagement to Dinah Thurston. 

“ You have always been Dinah’s friend. I thank God she will 
have you for her friend in the future. Towards myself, perhaps, 
you are a little less than kind. Some French proverb explains to 
us, does it not, how a man’s friendship can never be perfectly equal 
for a husband and for his wife ? ” 

The French proverb is at fault as far as I am concerned,” said 
Geoffrey. “lam your friend. lam Dinah’s. At this present 
hour I reprobate the conduct of both with strict impartiality.” 

My conduct is negative. I find myself placed by an outburst 
of the eternal feminine injustice in a ridiculous position. I 
must, as men have done before me, live a ridiculous position out. 
Whatever my wife desires in the way of money arrangements 
shall be hers. On the day when she is tired of Tavistock Moor I 
shall be at her feet.” 

“ All this might be aptly said if you were in a stage-box, a 
critic looking on at the histrionic break-up of other people’s lives 
with a view to the morning papers.” 

I have tried, since I was a boy, to regard everything con- 
cerning myself from an indifferent person’s point of view. The 
habit has become second nature, and — 

“ Shake yourself free of it to-night. You are not an indifferent 
person. You are not criticising a scene in a mixed drama. Yon 
have to decide whether you, Gaston Arbuthnot, intend, at thirty, 
to be a failure or a success.” 

A failure! ” repeated Gaston, his pride galled instantly. In 
your office of peacemaker, Geff, don’t allow your good will to run 


LABELLED AND CORDED. 


341 


away with you. We have a score of big examples — Byron, if you 
choose, at their head — to show how men of shipwrecked lives can 
give the world the best of their genius.” 

‘‘ When you come to genius,” said Geff, grimly truthful, we 
are off our lines. We are talking of common men, not of giants. 
For a man of your calibre, Gaston, to forfeit his domestic happi- 
ness, is to forfeit all. In losing Dinah, whatever her folly in 
proposing the Quixotic scheme, you would lose your right hand. 
Up to this time, even with a good and beautiful and long- 
suffering woman at your side, your backslidings have been many. 
Do you think you are going to work onward and upward without 
an influence such as Dinah’s has been to hold you straight ? ” 

“ You speak hotly, Geff.” 

I feel hotly,” answered Geoffrey, without an effort at a fence. 
‘‘ My own life has been spoilt — I — I would say,” he corrected 
himself, “ the happiness which men like you, Gaston, can throw 
away or keep, as they choose, is not likely to come near me. 
Mine must be sought for in such commonplace daily work as’ I 
have strength to do. This gives me a selfish interest in the wel- 
fare of the people I love. Your fireside and Dinah’s,” he attempt- 
ed a lighter tone, is the only one to which I can look forward in 
my old age.” 

Again Gaston watched his face, curiously. Perhaps in the 
moment’s keen illumination he read aright the larger nature than 
his own, apprehended with his balanced mixture of worldly depth 
and moral airiness, a page whose intricacies should never, in this 
life, be wholly deciphered by poor Geff himself. 

You were right as to genius, Geoffrey. There is an ingredient 
wanting in me! If I had had your heart I should not at thirty 
be a manufacturer of third-rate prettinesses for the dealers.” 

Engrossed in talk, the cousins paced to and fro among the falling 
shadows of the garden for another hour. It was an hour, a talk, 
which neither of the Arbuthnots would be likely to refer to, 
which neither, certainly, would forget this side the grave. By- 
and-by, when night had come on in earnest, when the roses and 
jasmines that clung round the hotel verandahs smelt dewy sweet, 
Gaston returned to the house, alone. He entered through the 
little court that had been fitted up as his studio. Here a flicker 
of starlight overhead showed him his tools, his unfinished models, 
his working blouse, all the implements of his craft, neatly set in 


342 


A GIliTON GIRL, 


order as Dinah’s hand left them. Passing on into the parlor he 
found himself in darkness, silence. For a moment a nameless 
fear — the possibility that she was gone — contracted Gaston Ar- 
buttinot’s heart. Then, with soft, eager step, he made his way 
to his wife’s bedroom, laid his hand on the lock, and opened the 
door inch by inch. 

A solitary light burned there. 

“ May I come in, Dinah ? Can I be of use to you in your 
packing ? ” 

To this she answered not, or answered in so low a voice that 
Gaston’s ear could not catch the sound. He pushed back the 
door and entered, making fast the lock behind him. Dinah’s 
packing, to the smallest detail, was complete. Her boxes, labelled 
and corded, stood in a row ; her wraps were put up ; her travelling- 
bag was strapped. Dinah, herself, sat in a low chair beside the 
curtained half opened window. The light from a hand-lamp on 
the mantelshelf just enabled Gaston to discern the dead white- 
ness of her tired face. 

“ Your packing done ? ” he asked her. And have you moved 
these heavy boxes by yourself } ” 

The French woman helped me. Iliad no need of her — my 
arms are strong — but when she insisted, I thought it would look 
strange to refuse longer. I tried to speak to her lightly — just 
saying that I had to go away, of a sudden, to stay with friends in 
England.” 

“ That was wise. It were a pity that idle tongues should begin 
to talk of us already.” 

Ho answer came to this. Gaston saw that her hands trembled, 
as they lay tightly clasped together on her knee. 

“ And about money, Dinah ? ” 

Crossing the loom, Mr. Arbuthnot shut down the window, then 
placed himself at the distance of two or three feet from his wife. 
He looked at her long and tenderly, looked as though on that 
white, strained face he saw some beauty which the dulness of his 
senses, the selfishness of his heart, had never during the past 
four years let him discover. 

Geoffrey and I have just had a long talk. I believe, as far as 
Southampton, you had better let Geff be purseholder. Then we 
must think of the future. We must plan as to a permanent 
settlement. I am a poor man, you know, Dinah, or rich only by 


LABELLED AND CORDED. 343 

fits and starts. If I can secure to you two hundred pounds a year 
could you make it enough ? ” 

Dinah raised her clasped hands deprecatingly. Her speech 
failed her. How in the moment when she needed strength, self- 
control most, they proved traitors. She could only sit, faint, cold 
sick, only to hear the details of her own passionate wish put into 
calm, reasonable— aye, and generous detail by Gaston. 

“ For the first year,” he repeated, until I become a steadier 
worker, could you make an allowance of two hundred pounds 
suffice ?” 

I want nothing but a few pounds at first,’^ said Dinah, with a 
desperate effort. After that, I will work — plain-sewing, out- 
door work, anything they will find for me to do.” 

You might get plain-sewing and out-door work too, without 
going as for as Tavistock Moor.” 

“ But I am known there. I am not the sort of woman — I 
mean, as yet — to make my way, alone, among strangers.” 

‘‘ You shall neither go to Tavistock Moor nor among strangers. 
You shall remain with me.” Gaston said this with slow emphasis. 
‘‘ The law is on my side,” 

Poor Dinah started up. The world seemed to float away from 
before her. A piteous look in which — yes, amidst all its anguish 
— there was a tremble of hope, went across her blanched face. 

My sins have been grievous enough, the sins of carelessness 
and selfishness — they have not gone deeper. Let the future make 
up for them. Forgive me, Dinah!” Arbuthnot’s arms were 
opened wide, “ I could not work, I could not live without you. 
I love you better than my life.” 

With a cry as of a child taken back, unexpectedly, to the lost 
shelter of home, Dinah fell upon his breast. 


CHAPTER XLVI. 


A BY-TERM MAN. 

But no such good thing as reconciliation fell to Marjorie Bar- 
trand. 

Within a week of Geoffrey’s departure Dinah and her husband, 
bride and bridegroom once more, started joyously on their way 
to Italy. There was a little wonder among the few people who 
had known them, a little hypothetic gossip, an unjust suspicion, 
perhaps, tliat Linda Thorne could clear up more secrets than one, 

as she listed.” And then Guernsey knew the name of Arbuth- 
not no more. Marjorie Bartrand must take up life at its old 
point before love, before disappointment made acquaintance 
with her — must stand chill and alone, in the same Arcadia where 
she stood beside Geoffrey on the morning of their one day’s en- 
gagement; must work under a new teacher in the school-room 
where every book, every window-pane, spoke to her of the past, 
and of the sharp irrevocableness of her loss. 

Autumn faded, monotonously, into the season of soft weather 
which in the Channel archipelago does duty for winter. March 
came again with its outside show of hope; all Tintajeux busy at 
farm-work — the seigneur, alert of step, taking part in his potato- 
planting and vraic harvest, like a man of five and-twenty. Later 
on, the cuckoo flower blushed anew, the rooks vociferated from 
the tree-tops. And then, a little later, the roses reddened. Mar- 
jorie Bartrand, conning over the entries in her last year’s pocket- 
book, began to know the meaning of the somber word anniver- 
sary. 

“To-day,” after this fashion the record ran, “commenced my 
reading with Geoffrey Arbuthnot.” 

“Many faults in my Latin exercise. Geoffrey Arbuthnot stern 
and inhuman.” 


A BY-TERM MAN. 


846 


‘‘ Have resolved to lecture a certain person on his neglect of 
his wife. And on frivolity.” 

“ This day received my first letter from Geoffrey Arbuthnot. ' 

And so through the brief drama, until a final entry on Sunday, 
July the 3d— “Today Geoft’rey Arbuthnot left Guernsey for- 
ever.” After which all was blank — in the pocket-book, as else- 
where. 

There were somber anniversaries, I say, for Marjorie Bartrand. 
For two or three of the young women who have flitted across the 
background of this story, summer brought the sound of jocund 
bells, brought a day which to each must henceforth be the one 
crowning anniversary, dark or sunny, of life. Rosie Yerschoyle 
took to herself a mate, happily for Rosie, a worthier man than 
Rex Basire. Ada de Carteret became the wife of little Oscar 
Jones. Marjorie enacted bride-maid, until the sight and smell of 
orange blossoms were a weariness to her. She felt glad when 
weddings and summer were alike over, when the scents of blown 
syringa and heliotrope belonged definitely to the past, glad when 
the equinox had stripped the woods, and November, grave and 
pale, approached, like a friend who knew her trouble, and had 
solace in store for her. 

For Marjorie’s character had opened out rather than altered. 
She was a Bartrand — high-handed as ever; during the past fifteen 
months had worked with a courage betokening of what tough 
fiber her spirit was made. In November a decisive step toward 
the Alma Mater was to be taken. Mademoiselle Pouchee, the 
earliest on the Tintajeux list of governesses, had long besought 
Marjorie to stay with her in Cambridge, and the seigneur, with 
exceeding bad grace, had tardily consented to the visit. For 
Cambridge meant Girton! Marjorie, of late, had been coaching 
with a Girton graduate who held office in the Guernsey college, and 
was promised credentials to the highest feminine magnates of the 
University. “ Women who, in achieving renown, had lost the 
fairest ornament of their sex.” Thus spoke old Andros, stirred 
by the irreconcilable antipathies of his youth — antipathies which 
sixty subsequent years amidst a world in full progress had 
failed to modify. 

“The best person you could come across would be that tutor 
of yours — Arbuthnot.” The seigneur brought the blood into 
Marjorie’s cheeks by telling her this, one day. “We must con- 


346 


A QIRTON GIRL. 


elude that I shall die, some time. It is given to few men to draw 
breath in three centuries. When I am gone you will need a hus- 
band more than the Higher Education. I liked Arbuthnot. He 
was a shallowish classic, and overful of this modern ‘ know-all, 
know-nothing ’ spirit. But he was a man — so many honest Eng- 
lish stone, moral and physical, in him! A good make-weight for 
a bit of wandering thistle-down like you.” 

The speech lingered in Marjorie’s penitent soul. If things had 
gone differently, then, old Andros would not have said nay to 
Geoffrey’s suit! Her own passionate temper, the jealousy that 
could brook no rival, present or in the past, were alone answer- 
able for love forfeited, for a vista of long years, out of which the 
sweet fulness of youth, at youth’s best, should be wanting. 

And blood warm and generous ran in Marjorie’s veins. Her 
object in visiting Cambridge was, of course, to make personal ac- 
quaintance with Girton. Her hopes and fears must be centered 
on the august ladies who in future days would be her Dons. But 
the remembrance of her lost sweetheart plucked ever at her heart. 
If by accident Geoffrey crossed her path, what would be her 
duty? That was the thing to consider — duty. Simply as an old 
comrade, might she not hold out her hand, seek a final word of 
explanation? At what nice point should self-respect, a due sense 
of wounded Bartrand pride, draw the line of un forgiveness? 

These were not questions she could propound to her Girton 
coach, a lady of fair exterior, young in years, but who had recently 
come out well in two Triposes. Cassandra Tighe, with her low- 
lier range of thought, stood nearer to one, Marjorie felt, her 
sixty winters notwithstanding, in such trivial human perplexities as 
belong to love and lovers. In these poor matters ignorance would 
seem to possess a spurious wisdom of its own. The higher 
sciences assist one moderately. And so, on the vigil of her Eng- 
lish journey, the girl started away between the lights, alone, and 
with an overflowing heart, to seek her old friend’s counsel. 

It was a typical autumn evening of this mid Channel region. 
A north-west wind shivered and sobbed among the poplars that 
hedged the entrance-way of Cassandra’s domain. The garden 
dahlias drooped their heads, the chrysanthemums with their thin, 
half-bitter odor, showed wan and ghostly in the tliickening dusk. 
An irresistible sense of decay was conveyed by the fitful rustle 
of the falling leaves. The surrounding fields and copses were 


A BT-TERM MAN, 


347 


shrouded in vague mist. Loss and uncertainty — these seemed 
the dominant notes in the pallid landscape. They suited Mar- 
jorie Bartrand’s mood. Were not loss and uncertainty the domi- 
nant notes of her own changed life? 

The cottage door stood open. No sound stirred within, save 
the ticking of the old Dutch clock on the stairs. Unannounced, 
she made her way in to Miss Tighe’s home-like ground-floor 
drawing-room. The weather was too mild for more than a pre- 
tense at fire, the hour not late enough for lamp or candle. Cas- 
sandra sat unoccupied beside the scarce-lighted hearth. The 
kindly lady jumped up at the sound of Marjorie’s step, then, almost 
with an air of shame, began to excuse herself for her idleness. 
She had had a busy gardening day, little credit though her bor- 
ders did her, and after dinner meant to practice for a couple of 
hours at her harp. •'But even Cassandra Tighe,” she added, 
“must be tired sometimes. I am an old woman, Marjorie. It is 
the prerogative of all old people save the Reverend Andros Bar- 
trand, to sit when the day draws in with hands folded. At such 
times we live in the past, as you young ones love to do in the 
future.” 

“ The future,” repeated Marjorie, in an underbreath; “ that is 
what I want to speak to you about. I chose this hour on pur- 
pose. The best time to talk of difficult things is entre chien et 
loup, as the Guernsey folk say.” 

She sat down somewhat dejectedly on the opposite side the 
hearth. The young woman and the old one could just discern 
each other’s faces by the flicker of the slow-burning fire. 

“So you start for Cambridge to-morrow! And your grand 
father, I hear, gives you a letter to the Master of Matthias. Well, 
Marjorie, tliough you should fail to Girtonize the Spanish nation 
eventuaUy, I must praise you for your present cleverness in Gir- 
tonizuig tlie Seigneur of Tintajeux.” 

“ The seigneur was nevermore obdurate. ‘[If it pleased my 
granddaughter to roam the country with an organ and a monkey, 
she would do it; I could only see that the organ and the monkey 
were good of their kind.” This is his charming way of putting 
things — his excuse for giving me an introduction outside of 
Newnham or Girton.” 

“ And your Miss Travers, is to be your escort. She is 

conielier than one could have expected, poor thing. I have no 


348 


A OIBTON OIRL. 


prejudices, as everybody knows,” said old Cassandra. “Wbeii 
I heard Girtonite was coming to our college I held lUy peace. If 
one of these emancipated young women has regular features or a 
bright complexion, I acknowledge the fact. Still, one won- 
ders ” 

“ How such a girl as Miss Travers could choose the higher 
life, instead of marrying — some man like Lord Hex Basire, say, 
or Mr. Oscar Jones!” 

“ Those two are not the only types of man extant,” observed 
Ca^andra. 

To this there succeeded a sufficiently pregnant silence. Mar- 
jorie broke it, with effort. Her voice had become unsteady. 
Her sentences were disjointed. 

** We are to stay one night in London — I don’t know whether 
grandpa told you about the plans? Next day we shall see what- 
ever sights are visible through the November fog, and late in the 
afternoon I shall run down to Cambridge. It is high time I 
learned to knock about the world alone! If I work steadily when 
we come back to Guernsey, very likely I may go up to Girton as 
a by-term man in January.” 

“Is this the future you wanted to talk about?” Cassandra 
Tighe bent forward. She looked hard at the slim girlish figure, the 
delicately feminine face of Marjorie Bartrand. “ You must learn 
to knock about the world alone! You will go up in January as a 
by-term man! These prospects may be intoxicating. We require, 
I think, no assistance from the friendly half-light to discuss them 
in.” 

The remark went home. Marjorie’s ill-fated love affair had 
long been an open secret between her and old Cassandra Tighe, 
and in a few minutes’ time half confidences were over, reserve 
had gone to the winds. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s name, for the first 
time for months, was on the girl’s trembling lips. 

“ I am not likely to be overforward again. Miss Tighe. But, 
strive as I will, the longing overcomes me to see Mr. Arbuthnot — 
before he marries some one else — to give him a last chance of ex- 
planation. The word — Hie one word — I wrote that miserable 
afternoon may never have reached him. When I heard Mrs. Ar- 
buthnot was out,” Marjorie made confession, “ my courage went 
from me — I had hoped to leave my packet safe in Dinah’s hands, 
and I just gave it, without a message, to the servant who 


A BY- TERM MAN. 


349 


answered my ring. Then I drove away — fast, for fear Geoffrey 
should meet me and see my face.” 

“ The Arbuthnot people were a singular trio.” Cassandra made 
the remark with an irrelevant neutrality savoring of the serpent’s 
wisdom. “ The best looking of the men, not your tutor, Marjorie, 
is doing good things, it seems, as an artist. Colonel cle Gourmet 
has a correspondent in Florence, where the Gaston Arbuthnots 
live, and the accounts of them are favorable. You know, of 
course, that there is a Miss Arbuthnot?” 

“ Yes, I have heard the news. It is good to think that Dinah 
must be a happier woman now.” 

“We shall not see such a face again on our shores. Do you 
remember my mistake about her, Marjorie — the lecture I made 
you read your tutor on his frivolity?” 

“You ask me questions instead of answering mine. Miss Tighe. 
If I should meet him — if through blind accident I should speak 
to Geoffrey again, would it be delicate, would it show proper 
womanly pride, for me to attempt one last explanation?” 

Cassandra did not instantly reply. The sobbing of the wind 
had died among the poplars. The leaves fell noiselessly to the 
damp earth. Only the ticking of the clock on the stairs broke 
silence. 

‘ ‘ Forever — never !” 

“ Never — forever!” 

And with each second, thought Marjorie, how many human 
loves must be laid low — liow many hearts must begin to ache for 
all time as hers was aching now! 

Miss Tighe sat calm and placid, as when the girl first entered, 
her hands folded on her knee. “And what earthly inducement 
had Pouchee to settle in a University town?” she observed at 
length. “ Why does the woman live alone?” 

“ Her father was maitre d’escrime in Cambridge. She and her 
mother live on in the house where he died. I rather think 
mademoiselle gives French lessons still.” 

“ Oh, mademoiselle gives French lessons still, does she?” Cas- 
sandra’s tone was absent. She rose, moved closer to the hearth. 
Her face was level with the miniature portrait of a lad in old- 
fashioned uniform that hung there. “By and by, I am going,” 
she said very low, “to tell you something about which I have 
been silent for forty years.” 


350 


A QIRTON GIRL 


** Miss Tighe— ” 

“ Don't be afraid of an old woman’s prosy history, or of a ser- 
mon. You will have neither. Forty years ago, child, there 
lived, in the far north of England, a girl, somewhere about your 
present age. This girl was on the eve of being married. Her 
wedding dress was ordered — the guests were bidden. Well, at the 
eleventh hour she chose, in a flame of paltry jealousy, to resent 
some fancied want of devotion in her lover. He was single- 
minded, loyal — of flner stuff altogether than herself. They might 
have been reconciled in an hour if she would have let her heart 
speak — have returned to the arms outheld to receive her. The 
girl would make not an inch of concession. She came, as you do, 
Marjorie, of people who look upon unforgiveness as a virtue. 
She heard around her the old stock phrases — delicacy, family 
pride — the righteousness of subordinating feeling to will! And 
so it came to pass that the lover, having neither wealth nor title, 
was allowed to go. He exchanged into a regiment under orders 
for India. Our troops were then in Afghanistan, engaged in hot 
fighting, and — ” 

Miss Tighe’s voice — the brave, kind voice that Marjorie had 
always known — broke down. Marjorie felt herself turn chill with 
a vague terror. To hear of this white-haired woman’s love 
seemed, in her overstrained mood, like receiving a message from 
the world of ghosts. She awaited the sequel of the story, not 
speaking; not lifting her eyes to the narrator’s face. 

“ The lad fell — a locket his sweetheart had once given him hid- 
den in his breast. It came back to her, through a brother officer 
who knew something of the dead man’s story — ajid with a stain 
on it. That stain has marked every day of a lonely life through- 
out forty years. You will not speak of this again, remember.” 

“ Never, Miss Tighe, I promise you.” 

“ But keep my words in your memory. If you meet Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot — if a moment comes when happiness beckons one way, 
the Bartrand pride another, they may, perhaps, be of use to you.” 

So human hearts can remain true to their griefs for forty years! 
Marjorie pondered on this fact as she walked back through the 
November-smelling, dark country to Tintajeux. She felt, with 
the certainty of morbid eighteen, that her own life would be a 
counterpart of Cassandra Tighe’s. She would never love any 


A BY^TEUM MAN. 


3dl 


other man than Geoffrey — would never marry where she did not 
love. She was not likely to die. In the glow of her young health, 
feeling her limbs so lithe — the mere act of walking and breathing 
an ever- renewed bodily pleasure — death lay over an horizon which 
she had not yet sighted. Ah, if she could hear Geff’s step approach- 
ing now — if she could feel his hand-clasp, strong, friendly as in 
the days of old, the collective pride of the whole Bartrand race 
would not long stand between them! 

But the mirk lanes were forsaken; no human step save her own 
was to be heard. The lights were lit in the scattered cottage 
homesteads, the children at play round the fire, the elders resting 
after their day’s work. Through the low windows Marjorie could 
see one family group after another as she passed along, and 
felt her own loneliness the greater. As she came near Tintajeux 
the cry of the owls, than which no more freezing sound exists in 
nature, was all that gave her welcome. 

“ That stain has marked every day of a lonely life throughout 
forty years.” 

The moral of Miss Tighe’s story lingered in Marjorie’s heart. 
As she and her grandfather sat for the last time together over 
dessert, old Andros took not unkindly notice of her white cheeks 
and darkened eyes. 

“ You must get back your good looks before you show yourself 
in Cambridge. Women are sent into the world to be graceful. 
When they fail in that, they fail in everything. Be a senior- 
wrangler if you will, but keep your complexion. You have grown 
much more like your father of late.” This was the highest form 
of praise Andros Bartrand could offer her. “Don’t go back to 
the little skinn}^ Spanish witch of former days.” 

“I wish I could, sir.” cried Marjorie, a flash of quickly-roused 
mutiny in her eyes. “ The days when I was a little skinny Span- 
ish witch were better than any I am likely to know again in this 
world.” 


CHAPTER XLVII. 


BESIDE THE CKADLE. 

“ I JUST feel we are too- happy. It makes me tremble, Gaston. 

I would rather see the speck of cloud no bigger than a man’s 
hand than forever live in dread of it.” 

‘‘You would rather have anything than the actual, my dear. 
That is a little weakness of the sex. Surely your daughter ought 
to fill every crevice of your dissatisfied heart?” 

“She fills it, fuller than my heart can hold — my own sweet 
baby. She is a wonderfully forward child, is she not? So strong 
of her age — so intelligent — so beautiful!” 

“ Not beautiful, Dinah. I am no amateur of infants, although 
I can tolerate their presence after the age of two years. As re- 
gards the particular infant sleeping in the cradle, yonder, even 
my knowledge of the subject enables me to say she is unornamen- 
tal — as unornamental a child as could be found in Florence.” 

“She is your living portrait,” returned the mother, unconscious 
of irony. “ Yes, even to her shrewd looks, to the firm way she 
clasps her fingers. And already — in that,” murmured Dinah, 
penitently, “it may be she favors me — already, baby has a 
temper.” j 

These exceedingly domestic confidences were interchanged in 
a vast old Florentine room, fitted up by Gaston Arbuthnot as a 
studio, and on a November night, some forty-eight hours later 
than the gray evening when Marjorie paid her farewell visit to 
Cassandra Tighe. 

But November in Florence is a different season to November in 
the English Channel. The dry, nipping touch of Italian winter 
h?id already made itself felt beside the banks of the Arno, and the 
blaze from an up-piled heap of olive fagots cast a ruddy glow 
upon the room and its occupants. Gaston Arbuthnot, his day’s 


BESIDE THE CRADLE, 


353 


work done, reclined, outstretched, in one of his favorite Ameri- 
can chairs beside the hearth. On the other side the fire was a 
cradle, wickered, capacious, of the genuine Italian build that you 
may remember in many a sixteenth-century picture. And beside 
this cradle stood Dinah, serious of mien, gazing with rapt, 
madonna-like devotion at the little English child who slept there. 

At Gaston’s last remark she stooped and drew a muslin curtain 
tenderly over her daughter’s face. Then she came across to her 
husband, she sunk on her knees beside him. Stealing a soft arm 
round Mr. Arbuthnot’s neck, Dinah brought his cheek within 
reach of her lips. 

‘‘Honestly and without jesting, you can say you think the 
child ugly!” 

“ I think she will never be as handsome as her mother — the bet- 
ter for herself, perhaps. Beauty is a snare. Who should know 
that better than Dinah Arbuthnot ?” 

“ If I had been — well, plainer than I am, would you have 
sought me out, I wonder, in Aunt Sarah’s little cottage that 
summer ?” 

“Diflacult to speculate backward ! I had thought some plain- 
ish women charming before I heard the name of Lesser Cheriton.” 

“ That is a matter of course. You had been the friend of Linda 
Thorne.” 

Linda Smythe,'’as she was, at that time, I don’t know that 
‘ cette chere Smeet ’ could ever be called charming. She was 
lively, apt, a thorough mistress of situation and inexhaustively 
talkative — to a boy fresh from school that gift of talkativeness 
goes for much ! She lacked charm. I have heard her mourn 
over the deficiency, in her plaintive little way, poor soul, with 
tears.” 

How calmly they spoke of Linda’s qualities— this Darby and 
Joan of nearly six years’ standing, to whom romance, in its 
earliest, sweetest bloom, would seem to have returned ! From 
what a different standpoint Dinah could review the sentimental 
dilemmas of Gaston’s youth ! How the renewal of their love had 
bettered them, man and woman alike ! 

“Sometimes when I look back upon our Guernsey days, the 
days, I mean, which followed on that Langrune picnic, I feel a 
great remorse. Things ended happily — because you would not 
let my jealous temper ruin both our lives.” 


354 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


Possibly, thought Gaston Arbuthno^ because of GejJ. He re- 
membered their talk when the summer eve was sinking into dark- 
ness, the eve upon whose morrow Dinah would fain have quitted 
him forever. 

‘‘ But I deserved the heaviest punishment that could have fallen 
upon me. Jealousy, such as mine was then, means selfishness, 
not love.” 

“ Spoken from a fine moral height ! All the same, Dinah, I 
think you did love me slightly.” 

‘‘I was unjust to Linda Thorne about your wager. When I 
opened the packet she left , for you I was dishonorable. The 
whole thing may have been a jest — may have belonged to a time 
before you knew me at all. I recollect telling you I would keep 
that packet always. Well, Gaston — I wish now I had never seen 
it. There is a drawer in my dressing-case I have not once since 
had courage to open.” 

Gaston Arbuthnot turned his head. Studying his wife's face 
closely, some suspicion of possible mistake began to dawn upon 
him. 

“Are you certain as to your facts, Dinah? A drawer, you say, 
in your dressing-case which you never have found courage to 
open ! And why not ? I confess to being out of my depth. Lin- 
da’s gloves honestly lost by her, honestly paid, lay on the parlor 
mantle-shelf. Of this I am positive. From the mantle-shelf I 
naturally transferred them to my pocket. ” 

“ Gloves 1” 

“ What else ? You do not suppose poor Linda and I made 
bets of twenty-pound notes ?” 

“ But the word she wrote for you — the flower, the ribbon. Ah, 
Gaston,” cried Dinah, hurriedly, “let us never have another mis- 
understanding. I was wrong— criminal, if you choose— on open- 
ing a cover that was not directed to myself. But I suffered for 
my wrong-doing — you should know that— and you may be frank 
with me now. I am not so weak that you need hide a syllable of 
the truth. ” 

“ I piit the gloves in my pocket,” Gaston Arbuthnot reasserted, 
“and to the best of mj^ remembrance wore them out in about a 
fortnight. They were iron-gray. A pair of iron-gray gloves 
would last one ten days or a fortnight, would they not ?” 

On this Dinah Arbuthnot started to her feet. She remembered 


BESIDE THE CRADLE. 


355 


Gaston’s talent of old, for calm mystification, and her heart 
fired. 

“I have not re-opened the subject for amusement, Gaston. To 
show you that I would make amends in earnest, I will fetch the 
packet this moment. I shall feel easier when it is in your keep- 
ing, to destroy or keep, as you choose.” 

Taking up a hand-lamp, Dinah passed into a neighboring cham- 
ber. When she returned, in three or four minutes’ time, there 
was a pallor about her lips, a threatening of tears (the like of which 
during the past fifteen months had been happily absent) in her 
voice. 

“Baby has moved — has she not ! I thought I heard her from 
my room.” 

“ The infant sneezed,” answered Gaston Arbuthnot, with grav- 
ity. “Much to my terror. Sneezing might suggest waking. 
And to be alone with a waking baby recalls Dr. Johnson and the 
tower. Bring your wonderful packet here” — she had paused for 
a moment beside the child’s cradle— “and let us have the scene 
out.” 

“We will never have a scene again while we live.” Poor Dinah 
sunk into her former kneeling position; she rested her cheek 
against her husband’s coat-sleeve. “ Indeed, I think it might be 
fairer to you, more generous to Linda Thome, to close the matter 
— thus.” 

She held the packet in the direction of the flames. 

With a quick movement Gaston Arbuthnot’s hand stayed her. 
He drew the contents forth from the envelope. He read Marjorie 
Bartrand’s “ one word. ” Then he glanced at the blackened flower- 
stalks, at the bit of tarnished, Spanish ribbon. 

“And could you believe— in the full possession of your reason, 
wife— that this was meant for me ?” 

Dinah’s head drooped lower.. She colored violently. 

“ Could you believe that Linda Thorne, a woman who has 
travelled over half the habitable globe alone, picking up experience 
everywhere— Linda, a woman of tact, a woman of the world — 
would commit herself to sentiment of doubtful application, set 
down in black and white ?” ' 

“ I never stopped to reason— the heart within me was too sore. I 
knew Linda Thorne had called. I saw that the envelope was di 
rected to you.” 


356 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


“ Or to Geoffrey — which ? It is, as you see, addressed simply 
‘Mr. G. Arbuthnot.' '' 

“But Mrs. Thorne and Geff disliked each other. Do you 
think, even in jest, she would — 

“ My best Dinah — let a molehill which, during fifteen months, 
has been assuming gigandc size, return, forthwith, to molehill 
proportions ! This handwriting may be Marjorie Bartrand’s. One 
can imagine a classico-mathematical girl making that kind of ‘e.' 
It is certainly not Linda’s.'' 

“ And the meaning of the solitary word, ‘ Eepentance ’ ! " 

“ Ah ! you must read your own riddles,” answered Gaston, with 
suavity. “ Poor Linda and myself made an innocent wager of 
gloves, which I won. I know no more.” 

Dinah rose hastily. She tm-ned her face away from the fire’s 
light. Amidst the full happiness of the last year, in her wifely 
rejoicing over Gaston's progress in his art, in the flood of charity 
toward all men which had come upon her with the new delights 
of motherhood, she had always dreaded the cloud “ no bigger than 
a man’s hand,” had always remembered the secret which a jealous- 
ly locked drawer of her dressing-case hid out of sight. Her moral 
attitude toward Gaston had perforce been a stooping one, an atti- 
tude of dumb forgiveness. Believing in the present, hoping all 
things for the future, it had not been possible for her wholly to 
forget the past. In this moment's sharp enlightenment, this un- 
looked-for vindication of Gaston’s loyalty, her first sensation was 
one of relief. Succeeding it— so swiftly that Dinah distinguished 
not where relief ended and pain began — there swept across her the 
keenest shame which in her fair untarnished life her soul had ever 
known. 

“ You believe that the letter came from Marjorie Bartrand ?” 

The question fell from her lips almost unconsciously. 

“One suspects the Greek ‘e’s,’ and see — here, in this corner is 
the Bartrand crest, an eagle with a bad-tempered beak and upheld 
claw. Take back your own, wife, your cherished wndeUa. I 
will have none of it.” 

“ And you think she cared, really, for poor Geff ? ” 

“ Marjorie was seventeen years old. The season of the year 
was June. They bent their heads together over the same school- 
room table. Even I — I, who have been so long out of the running, 
saw whither things tended as early as the rose-show. Geff, no 


BESIDE THE CRADLE. 


367 


doubt, after a Platonic mode, admired the budding Girton girl — 
a girl,"’ said Gaston, narrow-mindedly, ''far too pretty for her 
calling ! There came a breeze between them — Geoffrey hinted as 
much to me the night before he left Guernsey — a threatening of 
storm which, if a certain letter had not been kidnapped, might 
have cost him his life, I mean his liberty there and then.” 

By this time the blood had gone from Dinah’s cheeks. *' And 
all this was brought about through me, through my small, self- 
engrossed jealousy. Oh, Gaston, how sinful I was, how guilty I 
am still ! But for me, Geoffrey might long ago have come to hap- 
piness He was our best friend always, and I betrayed him. I 
am the veriest wretch on earth.” 

Tears of repentance rushed to Dinah’s eyes. 

"You do not mention a slight reparation you owe to Linda 
Thorne,” observed Gaston, with his shrewd smile. “You forget 
that something may be due also to me, even me, a husband.” 

“ I was ill, body and mind, that miserable day. I had scarce 
had an hour’s sleep since I came back from Langrune without 
you. A flimsy excuse,” poor Dinah faltered, “and yet the only 
one I have to offer.” 

“ It is the excuse in vogue. The big social scientists put just 
the same plea forward for the criminal classes. Crime is an ill- 
ness. A man may run a knife into another simply because his 
digestion, reacting on the nerve centers, happened to be out of 
order. Probably, like you, my dear, the poor fellow had been 
suffering from insomnia! Such excuses,” added Gaston, “are 
comforting enough for the man with the knife, but scarcely so 
consolatory to him stabbed. ” 

Dinah touched the flower-stalks wistfully. She folded the rib- 
bon with care before returning it to the envelope. Her Ijands 
trembled in her excitement. 

“You talk about reparation. I shall not let an hour be lost. I 
shall write to Miss Bartrand at once, send back her own letter, and 
confess — oh, Gaston, the hard word is yours — that ’twas I kid- 
napped it.” ^ 

“You mean to perform this act of contrition for Geoffrey’s 
sake?” 

“Ido.” 

“Poor Geffl After getting decently out of danger once (and 


358 


A QIRTON GIRL, 


his letters don’t savor of a broken heart), it seems a trifle rough on 
him to have the thing revived.” 

“ P< 96 >?’ Geff !” echoed Dinah, her eyes glistening through their 
tears. “ You call a man poor who has a chance of winning Mar- 
jorie Bartrand’s love? Does our happiness make you such an 
egotist,” — the reader will note that Dinah’s vocabulary was en- 
largiug — “such an egotist you do not care for other people to 
marry?” 

“ Or are you like the fox in the fable, my dear child — which?” 

Dinah rested her clasped hands upon her husband’s shoulder, 
and cogitated softly. 

“ Yes, I shall write to Tintajeux to-night. If it is not too late, 
if the hearts of both are free. Miss Bartrand will And some way 
of letting Geoffrey know the truth.” 

“Of that you may be assured. If two women are to conspire 
together in league against him, I say ‘ poor Geff ’ with still more 
marked emphasis.” 

And rising, Gaston moved in the direction of the door. In 
these later days, in the confldence of established love, Dinah had 
thought it no grievance that her husband should join the Floren- 
tine Artists’ Club, or spend a portion of every evening in other so- 
ciety than hers. 

“ Like all true women you are a remorseless match-maker,” he 
told her. “Unless the flame between these two victims is clean 
burned out, you will contrive by your letter to rekindle it.” 

“ I wish I were a better scribe — that I could put my heart be- 
tween the lines! Oh, I must begin at once. Baby shall be left — 
for the flrst time — with old Giacinta, and I will run round to the 
Piazza, and post the letter myself.” 

“ Five years hence, I hope Geoffrey will bless you for having 
written it. There was a flash of temper not to be forgotten in 
Marjorie Bartrand’s handsome eyes.” 

“And if there was! If a woman has a temper, even a jealous 
one, is it impossible for her husband’s life to be happy?” 

Dinah had followed Gaston to the door. She held up her face 
— the loveliest face in Florence, said the artist who worked there- 
in — for his kiss. 

“All men are not philosophers,” Gaston Arbuthnot made reply, 
“I have learned — tolerably dear the lesson cost me — not only to 
exist in a stormy atmosphere, but to flourish there.” 


BESIDE THE CRADLE. 


359 


And this is what Dinah wrote, not troubling herself over possi- 
ble faults of syntax, not making a fair copy in the slanting pointed 
handwriting to which after much labor she had tediously attained. 
This is what Dinah wrote straight out from her heart: 

Florence, November 15. 

“My dear Miss Bartrand, — I have just found, with shame 
and remorse, that I did you grievous wrong, last July twelve- 
montli. You were the kindest friend, save Geif, that ever I met, 
and I repaid you, little meaning it, with treachery. Perhaps 
when you see the inclosed you will guess what bitter confession I 
have got to make. 

“ Dear Miss Bartrand — I found your envelope on the mantel- 
piece of our parlor at Miller’s Hotel, and I committed the mean- 
est action of my life. I broke it open — and because I was blind 
with selfish trouble, and thought of my own suffering before all 
things, I kept the letter. I have had it in my possession till this 
hour. 

“ It would be poor excuse to say I mistook the person it was 
meant for, as well as the hand that wrote it. It would be coward- 
ice to say my heart was too hot, too miserable to reason. I sinned, 
and if my sin has stood between my best friends and happiness, 
my punishment will last me my life. 

“ Unless I make too bold, may I hope, some future time, you 
w’ill let Geoffrey read what I now write? Ask him to think of 
July the 1st, the day I went with him to Guernsey hospital. It 
was on that day, a quarter of an hour after Geoffrey left me, at 
the sight of some one he 'will remember, that I found your letter. 

“ Dear Miss Bartrand, I am the penitent and humble well- wisher 
of your happiness, 

“Dinah.” 

The letter was directed to Tintajeux Manor, Guernsey, and 
posted by the writer’s hand on the night of November 15. A 
sharp Italian night, with the swollen Arno swirling, the moon- 
light lying in ebon and ivory patterns along the Florentine streets, 
with only one person — so it seemed to Dinah’s beating heart — 
abroad in the sleeping city. 

At the same hour Marjorie’s eager eyes looked forth, through 
rain and fog, through the blurred obscurity of a Great Eastern 
carriage window, upon the lamps of Cambridge. 


CHAPTER L. 


HAPPINESS. 

Madame Pouchee’s house, the goal of the girl’s journey, be- 
longed to history; a thatched, lozenge- windowed structure, of 
which the pargeted gables, the black oak joints, and plaster panels 
abutted, with pathetically incongruous air, as of some aged spin- 
ster at a ball, on one of the brisk modern thoroughfares of the 
town. 

A brass plate engraved “Pouchee” was on the front door, con- 
ferring a semi-professional character upon the moldering house- 
hold. Although the fencing-master, honest man, had lain for 
twenty years in P^re la Chaise, and Madame Pouchee had iio 
more ostensible livelihood than such small sums as mademoiselle 
gained by the teaching of her language, their plate raised them to 
the plane of citizens. The mother and daughter formed units in 
that curious gathering of poor French people which exists in our 
university towns, decayed families of fencing - masters, hair- 
dressers, or cooks, once prosperous, who shiver through English 
fog and cold to the end of tlleir existence because they are “dans 
leurs meubles,” ratepayers! 

To quit her dark old home, to forego the sound of Great St. 
Mary’s curfew, to submit her furniture to the hammer of the auc- 
tioneer, would, to Madame Pouchee, have seemed little short of 
sacrilege. She passed her life with no larger pleasure than knit- 
ting, no acuter pain than rheumatism. She could go to mass on 
Sundays and festivals with more security in Cambridge than in 
France. Pouchee’s foils and masks were suspended in the raft- 
ered entrance - hall ; Pouchee’s portrait, as a glossy bachelor of 
twenty, with black frock-coat, turn-down collar, and gamboge 
gloves, hung in the salon. Upstairs, in one of the low-ceiled 
attics, were her crucifix and benitier, just as she brought them 
from far Provence before her first child saw the light. 


HAPPINESS. 


861 


Such things to an aged woman are more than climate, more than 
nationality. Madame Pouchee’s lot had not been rose-colored 
during the fencing-master’s life. At the time of his death, even, 
monsieur was in Paris, led thither by some of the unexplained 
affairs which perennially drew him from his own fireside. But 
his widow clung to the foils and masks and portrait with as much 
patient fidelity as though he had loved her always. The careless 
husband who lay in P^re la Chaise belonged to Madame Pou- 
cliee’s middle age. The foils, the masks, the glossy bachelor with 
gamboge gloves and turn-down collar, were relics of her youth. 

Every corner of the house was burnished to that vanishing point 
of cleanliness which only French housewives understand, on the 
evening of November 15. Ere Marjorie had well alighted from 
her cab, an unforgotten figure rushed forth through wet and dark- 
ness to meet her, a pair of kind solid arms held her fast. 

“But you are tall — but you are fresh and vermeille!” Mademoi- 
selle Pouchee hurried the girl across the strip of pavement to the 
house. “ I see no more the little Cendrillon of old days. Come, 
then, m^re, leave thy kitchen. Come, that I may present thee to 
our future Girton girl !” 

Madame Pouchee’s cheeks were swarthy as the olives of her na- 
tive country. An ample checked apron was tied round her neat 
black dress. She wore the provincial linen head-dress of her 
youth. Genuine French people do not shake hands on every oc- 
casion of human life, and fifty English years had left Madame 
Pouchee a genuine Frenchwoman still. The old lady came for- 
ward, not with a hand outstretched, but with such natural cour- 
tesy, such charming welcome written on her Southern face as 
reminded Marjorie of Spain, and caused her somewhat flagging 
spirit to rally. 

“ I feel six years old again, dear Pouchee.” This she said when 
mademoiselle had led her into the salon, a tiny paneled room 
where a table was cozily spread for a dinner of two before the 
fire. “Surely we had our lessons this morning ! Surelj^ I was 
wicked — when was I not wicked? — and you gave me a double 
row of spelling for my penitence.” 

Throughout the evening a mysterious sense of having gone back 
to her childhood fell balmily on Marjorie’s heart. Madame Pou- 
chee gave them a little dinner, as exquisitely cooked, I dare to 
say, as was any dinner in Trinity or Magdalen that night. For 


362 


A OIRTON GIRL. 


dessert were Tintajeux pears, of which a goodly hamper had 
come over as a present from the seigneur. Their coffee was 
served in Sevres cups, dislodged for the occasion from Madame 
Pouchee’s inlaid cabinet — the costliest ornament of the salon, 
brought with her in bridal days from Paris, when the nineteenth 
century was in its teens. 

“It is like a Tintajeux holiday,” cried Marjorie, as she and 
Pouchee sat, hand clasped in hand, beside the fire. “Do you 
remember every 29th of May we used to eat our dinner under 
the big oak ip honor, you said, of le martyr Protestant, Charles?” 
The prayer-books in the Tintajeux family pew were of ancient 
date. Pouchee, honest creature, was wont to entangle herself 
among the various Stuart and Orange services, greatly to the 
seigneur’s edification. “Ah, Pouchee, we are wiser now. We 
have learned history from loftier historians than Lady Calcott. 
And I, for one, am not happier.” 

“ Whenever I look at Tintajeux I see a small Marjorie with 
temper, with eyes, with a determined Spanish face — and whom I 
loved much. There are no figures in the picture. Still, when- 
ever I look at Tintajeux — ” 

Mademoiselle Pouchee’s voluble tongue stopped abruptly. 

“No figures in the picture?” Marjorie glanced round the 
empty walls. “ And what picture are 3'^ou talking of ? Where 
is the photograph of the manoir 1 sent you last Christmas?” 

As she spoke Madame Pouchee entered, bearing a fresh-trimmed 
lamp — for this little household boasted of no. parlor-maid. The 
old Frenchwoman lingered awhile, her quick septuagenarian eyes 
watching the faces of her daughter and of their guest. She had 
caught Marjorie’s last words. 

“The photograph of Tintajeux Manoir? Why, it has been 
moved upstairs. It hangs in the salon of our gentleman, notre 
bon locataire — pas vrai, ma fille?” 

Mademoiselle Pouchee put the interruption quietly aside. 

“ Mere loses her memory. We must not always heed her,” she 
observed to Marjorie presently. “In by-gone days, when the 
good papa was living, our family received undergraduates as 
lodgers. M^re has the old time in her heart stilh” 

“Jesuitry, Pouchee! I remember your talents in that line. 
In by-gone days, when the good papa was living, no photograph 
of Tintajeux Manoir existed.” 


HAPPINESS. 


363 


The remark was accom)3anied by a Bartrand look, as familiar, 
as smiting to poor Poucbee as though she and Marjorie had done 
battle over some delicate point of .moral faithfulness that very 
morning. 

“There are accidents — contingenci^'?— nay, times being hard- 
there is necessity. As well confess the truth. We do not take 
lodgers.” Pouchee’s eyes dwelt fondly on the inlaid cabinet, the 
porcelain, the exquisite order of the little salon. “ We are private 
citizens — renti^res, living on our means.'’ 

“ And there is no one in the house sa\ e yourselves?” 

A flourish of Pouch6e’s Angers hinted negation. “The old 
place is, in fact, two houses, as you will see by daylight. There 
are rooms at the back that can be entered by a flight of open-air 
steps — steps dating from the fourteenth century, ma mie.” 

“You promised me truth — not history, mademoiselle.” 

“And by hazard — for the moment — we have a locataire. Not 
an undergraduate. We spare a room or two, on occasion, to some 
quiet gentleman — some resident M.A. — some student from the 
Art Schools. No undergraduate sets foot within our doors. We " 
are not licensed. ” 

So keen a sense of distinction was conveyed by the italicized 
words that Marjorie forbore from further questioning. An hour 
later, however, when they were parting for the night in the fresh, 
chintz-draped attic which was the guest-chamber of the house, 
she ventured on a last surmise. 

“ As we passed a certain baize door at the turning of the stairs 
I smelled the smell of a pipe. Our bon locataire must live some- 
where in that neighborhood, maderrroiselle — our quiet gentleman, 
who is not an undergraduate, and who has the photograph of 
Tintajeux Manoir on hk^^alls?” 

But Pouch ee was blankly uncommunicative. The gentleman 
went in and out by the other staircase. Marjorie would neither 
see nor hear him during her stay in Cambridge. As to the pho- 
tograph — it would certainly return to its place in the salon to- 
morrow morning. 

“If you are afraid of University ghosts,” added the Frenclu 
woman, as she bade her guest a Anal good night, ‘ you will do 
wisely to bolt your door. Sleep well, ma mie, and dream that we 
are making cowslip balls, as we used a dozen years ago, in the 
woods of Tintajeux.” 


864 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


The first five days of her Cambridge visit were resolutely spent 
by Marjorie in sight-seeing. It was well for lier, she said, to 
come under the external influences of the Alma Mater, watch the 
cheerful flow of undergraduate life, look at Newnham and Girton 
from without, before delivering her letters of introduction. It 
was well for her, while she still stood uncommitted to the future, 
to run a la^t forlorn chance of meeting the man she loved! 

Here was the truth, unrecognized, perhaps, as truth, even in 
Marjorie Bartrand’s moments of sternest self-questioning. Day 
after day, however, slipped vainly by. A dozen times in each 
twenty-four hours her heart would leap, her pulses throb as men 
of Geoffrey’s height or build went past her in the crowded streets. 
Geoffrey Arbuthnot appeared not. She fell to quarreling with 
herself over her own folly. Geoffrey might be at the other side 
of the world — married — contented: in every case must have 
learned long ago, to live his life, to do his work without her. 
Happily, there were reprisals — 

On the morning of the sixth day she determined to put her 
sweetheart away from her remembrance, forever. 

“ I have come to the end of my sight-seeing.” This she told 
the Pouchees at breakfast. “ I have heard a University sermon 
and the services at King’s and Trinity. We liave visited Trurnp- 
ington church-yard and the Backs. I have seen Milton’s tree and 
Gray’s fire-escape, and — and the Girton girls playing tennis. 
When I have gone over your house, Madame Pouchee, when I 
know what kind of rooms reading gentlemen inhabit, my ex- 
perience will be complete.” 

The speech fell from her idly. Small curiosity in the affairs 
of others was never a sin to be reckoned among the Bartrand 
qualities. 

But Mademoiselle Pouchee’s manner gave it purpose. Made- 
moiselle changed color, fidgeted with her coffee-spoon, contra- 
dicted herself. “The rooms were the plainest rooms in Cam- 
bridge. No knowing at what time our gentleman went out or 
might return. For herself she seldom entered his part of the 
house, and — ” 

“Pouchee,” exclaimed Marjorie, the old spirit of contradiction 
taking possession of her, “ there is a mystery about our excellent 
lodger which I mean to solve. You seldom enter his part of the 
house, you say? You were in his rooms last evening. I saw 


JIA^FI^J£SS. 


36S 


you enter through the baize-door, as I have seen you do pretty 
often already. I heard your voice as you talked to him. Explain 
these things.” 

“Eufiu! It would be better if the truth were told,” said old 
Madame Pouchee in her own language. “ Our gentleman is an 
enemy of the sex. What will you have ! When he heard a 
young lady was coming to visit us — ” 

“ He offered, of free will, to go in and out b}^ the other stairs,” 
interrupted Pouchee, adroitly. “He showed the finest, most 
delicate consideration. Since that first evening when Marjorie 
perceived his pipe our gentleman has not smoked. He goes out 
early. He does not return until he is worn out with work — such 
work as his is, too — at night!” 

“Then it is impossible' we can disturb him,” exclaimed Mar- 
jorie, rising briskly from the table. “Asa matter of architecture 
I am interested in the fourteenth-century stairs. The rooms they 
lead to must be equally curious. You need not chaperone me.” 
She looked back at Pouchee across her shoulder. “ I shall push 
back the mysterious red baize and walk straight into Bluebeard’s 
chamber without knocking.” 

And running up the stairs, she was about to put her threat into 
execution when Pouchee, by a dexterous flank movement, cut off 
her advance. 

‘ ‘ There may be a litter of papers. Grand ciel 1 there may be the 
bones, the skull.” With her hands upon the lock Mademoiselle 
Pouchee barred Marjorie’s progress by her own solid person ; then, 
opening two inches of door, she peered in, cautiously. “ No; we 
are in order. We have locked up our skeleton for once. You 
may enter, child — Barbebleue is not here to eat you.” 

Marjorie Bartrand stopped short upon the threshold. Some- 
thing in the meagerly furnished room, the piles of books, the 
small fireless grate, the absence of any pretense at decoration or 
cheerfulness, affected her strongly. She shrunk from intruding, 
unbidden, on such valiantly borne poverty as was here in evidence 
before her. 

“And you have robbed him of Tintajeux Manoir!” She 
glanced round at the bare, damp stained walls. “Tintajeux at 
least gives one a notion of quick and wholesome air, of honest 
sunshine.” 

“ Our gentleman robbed himself. When I told him the morning 


366 


A OIRTON GIRL. 


after your arrival, that you had asked for it, he took the photo- 
graph from his wall with his own hand.” 

And you can give him no other picture. to fill its place?” 

“ He has a magnifique picture here, facing the window. See,” 
Pouchee adjusted herself into a favorable light with an air of con- 
noisseurship, “a magnifique portrait, just a little mildewed, of 
King William the Fourth. The fur on his majesty’s cloak has 
been the admiration of many artists. Come in, ma mie, entrez. 
What are you afraid of ?” 

And Marjorie entered. She looked for a few seconds at the 
time-stained mezzotint which, with its black frame, its cheap 
glass, seemed but to make the wall whereon it hung more sor- 
rowfully ugly. Then she crossed to the room’s one window — a 
diamond-leaded casement through whose small dulled panes 
the side view of a crowded alley, of the corner of a still more 
crowded church-yard, was attainable. 

A ponderous book lay on a chair beside the window. Marjorie 
Bartrand lifted it. 

“Marjorie, I forbid you to touch a book! Our gentleman 
studies for medicine. Medical works are not for the perusal of 
young girls.” 

“ The girl of the future peruses everything! Quain’s ‘ Elements 
of Anatomy,’ ” cried Marjorie, holding the volume as high out of 
Pouchee’s reach as its weight would allow. “I wonder whether 
our gentleman would lend it to us, if we asked him prettily? We 
might study our bones together, Pouchee. Who knows, in 
days to come, that I may not go for a Natural Science Tripos ?’" 

And — with the book still held aloft — her nimble fingers found 
their way to the title-page. In the top right-hand corner was a 
name, written in characters she knew: 

“Geoffrey Arbuthnot, January, 1880.” 

For an instant Marjorie Bartrand turned ashen pale. Then as 
she recalled her position, as she realized that she had forced her- 
self, unasked, into Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s room, the poor child 
crimsoned from throat to brow. She felt that the very soul with- 
in her had cause to blush over her temerity. 

“ Let us come away this moment. I am taken by surprise — 
there has been some cruel mistake.” 

The book almost fell out of her grasp. Swiftly as her limbs 
would carry her she made her \vay out of the room and down the 


HAPPINESS, 


367 


stairs. Then, when they were safe again in the little salon, she 
caught Pouchee’s hand with passion. 

“Hook to you, mademoiselle, for an explanation,” she cried, 
with impetuous voice, with flaming eyes. “ What right had you 
to conceal from me that Geoffrey Arbuthnot lived here?” 

But Pouchee had the strength of conscious innocence. All fur- 
ther need of mystification was over now. Regarding their 
lodger as a shy recluse, an enemy of the sex, the two poor French 
ladies had striven with will to keep him and their visitor from 
meeting. This was the secret of their reticence, the sum of their 
offending. Mademoiselle Pouchee met Marjorie’s lightning glance 
calmly. 

“M^re and I had nothing to conceal. How could it have inter- 
ested you to hear a stranger’s name?” 

“ And you never spoke of me in his presence?” 

“ If we did, it was by hazard. Why should Marjorie Bartrand 
of Tintajeux be more than any other young lady to Mr. Geoffrey 
Arbuthnot?” 

“Simply,” returned Marjorie, closely watching Pouchee’s un- 
moved face — “simply because Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot had the 
picture of Tintajeux hanging on his walls.” 

“ By hazard, also, he took a fancy to the photograph from the 
first day he came to lodge with us. It had a look of Scotland — it 
recalled some place where he had known good times. And so, to 
give him pleasure, I said that while he lodged here, Tintajeux 
should hang above his chimney-piece.” 

“From whence it was unhung, by his own hand, to please 
the caprice of an unknown visitor. Mr. Arbuthnot is very 
generous!” 

“ Mr. Arbuthnot,” cried Pouchee, warming on the instant, “is 
the most noble-hearted man living. Yes, and I have travelled! I 
have had my experiences widened. I know my world. That he 
should work hard at the hospital or over his books, I comprehend. 
A high degree is at stake. Men have their ambition. Mr. Arbuth- 
not goes into courts and alleys, vile places, left alone by the police, 
and where priests or parsons might get their throats cut. He 
searches out the worst outcasts in Barnwell and Chesterton, only 
to serve them.” 

“ Now — at this present time?” stammered Marjorie, conscience- 
stricken. 


368 


A Q IB TON' GIRL 


“Now, while you and I, mon enfant, have been sight-seeing. 
His last protege,” went on Pouchee, “is a miserable bargeman, 
one of the worst characters on the river. This man was struck 
over the head by some falling timber two or three weeks ago. He 
Was too nearly gone, so his mates thought, to be carried to the 
hospital, and our gentleman just saved his life. He has nursed 
him day and night since, as one of your great London doctors 
would nurse a Prince of the Blood. If Mr. Arbuthnot were of 
our religion I could understand it. I visit in Barnwell myself a 
very little.” 

This was Pouchee’s account of her own charities. She visited 
in Barnwell a great deal. Beside fever-stricken, dying pallets, her 
acquaintance with Geoffrey Arbuthnot had first begun. 

“But we, Catholics, see in the poor our own sick soul. We 
hope, in saving them, to save ourselves.” 

“And Geoffrey Arbuthnot?” 

“He serves them, gives them his time, his money — what do I 
know! his heart — simply because they are castaway men and wom- 
en. ‘ Sisters and brothers in a queer disguise.’ You should hear 
him say that, with his grave smile! It was to talk over some of 
these sisters and brothers, Marjorie, that I went to our gentle- 
man’s rooms, last night.” 

“ Our gentleman ought to be a happy man,” said Marjorie, with 
a sigh. 

The Frenchwoman’s shoulders were skeptically expressive. 

“ A hair-shirt is never worn for pleasure, child. It is not in 
nature that a man of six-and-twenty should care for other people’s 
lives more than for his own. Geoffrey Arbuthnot might have 
made a good servant of the church — an Ignatius Loyola, a Francis 
Xavier. But if one speaks about happiness— allezl” 


CHAPTER LI. 


FROM Dinah’s hand. 

These things sunk heavily on Marjorie’s bruised heart. She 
felt that Geoffrey’s indifference to herself was now an ascertained 
fact — nay, that his fancy for her, at no time worthy of a higher 
name, had turned to repugnance. He had asked her to be his wife 
under the glamour of a picturesque moment — a friendship, unique 
in its conditions from the beginning, suddenly taking upon itself 
a surface likeness to passion ! A true lover would not have availed 
himself so readily of his chance of freedom, would not have 
magnified his mistress’s heat of temper into a crime, would not 
have rejected the fullest amends that woman could offer, short 
of falling upon her knees in the dust before an offended sweet- 
heart I 

Mademoiselle Pouchee was overjoyed when the girl announced 
herself ready, next day, to deliver her letters of introduction. 

“ We shall see what such presentations lead to,” exclaimed the 
kindly soul, her round face beaming. “ A dinner here, a lunch 
there — the highest gentleman in Cambridge to be met at each! I 
'pxQdici 2i succh fou ! Not all the world, let me tell you, brings 
such letters to the University. By after to-morrow you will have 
every evening of your week engaged.” 

“The University will keep its head, dear Pouchee. A singularly 
insignificant young person from the Channel Islands runs no risk 
of becoming a sensation. The highest gentlemen in Cambridge 
Will pay Marjorie Bartrand just attention enough to ask her name 
— and forget it.” 

Nevertheless, on the score of invitations, Pouchee’s forecast 
proved a true one. Before night, arrived a friendly invitation 
bidding Marjorie to dine at the house of the Master of Matthias 
next day. As Miss Bartrand looked forward to studying in 


370 


A QIRTOJSr GIRL. 


Cambridge, the note added, a lady high in authority at Girton had 
been asked to meet her. 

“ Of that Girton lady I speak not,” observed Pouch ee, when the 
hour came on the morrow for Marjorie to dress. “About Newn- 
ham and Girton I am dumb.” Imagine Pouchee dumb on any 
subject, earthly or terrestrial! “1 have lived by brain-work, I 
have been a teacher over nineteen years. See my whitening hairs, 
my lost illusions, my disenchantments! In that sad trade the 
woman’s heart breathes not. Make yourself charming, fillette ! 
The most distinguished society of Cambridge is to be met with 
at the table of the Master of Matthias. For a child of eighteen 
there may be better things in store than coming out high in a 
Tripos; yes, or standing on a level with the first wrangler of them 
all.” 

Marjorie’s presumptive triumphs caused the whole Pouchee 
household to expand. Wax candles — rare extravagance — stood, 
lit, before her mirror. Flowers were on her toilet-table. Her 
white dinner-dress, with its simple adjuncts, was lovingly laid 
ready for her by mademoiselle’s hand. 

But in Marjorie’s restless heart there was no place for pretty 
dresses, for anticipation of social success. She drew aside her 
curtain! She gazed down through a chink oi blind upon the 
street, hoping against hope, as she had so often done before, to 
discover the face of her false sweetheart among the passers-by. 

It was the most crowded hour of the short November day. 
Athletic men were there, returning in flannels and wrappers, from 
the river of the Piece; sporting-men from the hunting-field; reading 
men from their trudge along the Wranglers’ Walk. Of “ pifflers” 
an abundance: men with terriers, men with button-holes, men in 
dog-carts — the whole many-colored undergraduate world, alert, 
self-engrossed. Drawing together the curtain, Marjorie Bartrand 
moved back to her looking-glass. She stood confronting the pale, 
serious-eyed vision that met her there with a kind of pity. She 
was so young, and the years to come were so many; disappointed 
years under whose weight she must stand upri^ght, g'lve no 
sign she winced beneath their 'burden, wear a brave counte- 
nance — work ! She felt that she hated Cambridge, this ceaseless 
ebb and flow, this turmoil of exultant, successful, youthful life! 
Was not Tintajeux, with its dying woods, its still moorland, a 


FROM DINAWS HAND, 


371 


fitter drop-scene for the little played-out drama of her personal 
happiness ? 

As Marjorie meditated, the sharp sound of the postman’s knock 
made her start. No letter of more vital interest than a dispatch 
from the seigneur was likely to reach her; and yet her breath 
quickened. Her mood throughout the day had been one of fever- 
ish, unreasoning expectancy. Change, for good or for evil, was, 
she felt, in the air. Opening the door of her room, she listened 
with vague impatience. Hot controversies anent overweight 
and foreign postage were impending between Madame Pouchee 
and the postman; madame, in the matter of extra half-pence, 
standing stoutly on the defensive. After a time there would 
seem to be a reluctant payment of coin, followed by the brisk 
shutting of an outer door. Then the old Frenchwoman’s slip- 
pered steps began leisurely to ascend the stair. The girl’s breath 
came faster. She ran out on the landing. The letter was not the 
size or shape of the seigneur’s letters, and it bore two postmarks. 
Florence, Guernsey — 

Five half-pence overweight. I hope, m^re, it may be worth 
its postage,” observed Mademoiselle Pouchee, busily tying up vio- 
lets in the salon for the adornment of Marjorie’s dress. “The 
child has never spoken about Italy, still — her heart is somewhere, 
m^re, and I don’t believe that somewhere is in Newnham or Gir- 
ton. Ah, when I, too, had eighteen summers, when — ” 

“ Pouchee! Dear, good old Pouchee!” called out a voice, 
resonant, hearty, imperious, from the attic floor. “ Leave the 
violets. Come upstairs, quick ! I have had splendid news. Every- 
thing in the world is changed. You must send an excuse to the 
Master of Matthias at once.” 

In a moment the Pouchees, mother and daughter, were at the 
bottom of the stairs. Marjorie Bartrand. her opened letter in her 
hand, a flush of wild excitement lighting her faceup into its vivid 
Southern beauty, stood on the landing above. 

“An excuse! Consider what you talk about!” exclaimed 
Pouchee solemnly. “ Have your splendid news with all my heart! 
But have your splendid dinner, too. The Master of Matthias keeps 
the best table in the University. At his house you meet — ” 

“ The most distinguished society of Cambridge. Oh, Pouchee, 
what should I find to say to distinguished society — to any king or 
emperor in Europe? Hark! There is Great St. Mary’s clock strik- 


372 


A OIRTON GIRL. 


ing the quarter. We have not a minute to lose. Write a note, 
mademoiselle, in your best hand, with your pretty, courteous 
French grace, and give it to the coachman to deliver. I must 
read my letter through once more.” 

Seven was the appointed time of the master’s dinner-party. At 
the moment when Great St. Mary’s clock boomed the hour’s first 
stroke, Marjorie Bartrand extinguished her candles. She descended 
with muffled tread to the red baize door at the turning of the stairs. 
Here she paused, listened until she heard the shrill treble of 
French voices, knew that the Pouchees were safely talking to- 
gether downstairs. Then, on tiptoe, she stole to Geoffrey’s quar- 
ters. The door stood ajar; a stray reflected flare of gaslight from 
some shop-window in the court beneath enabled her to grope her 
way across the chill and comfortless room. 

The girl paused irresolute. She remembered Cassandra Tighe’s 
story, remembered the miniature Bartrauds, the confession made 
in their presence of Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s first love. During a 
few seconds the old Bartrand pride swayed her — the happiness of 
her life hung by a thread. Then she took a packet from her breast. 
She laid it meekly, furtively, on the student’s writing-table and 
fled, like one who quits the scene of a committed crime, to the 
light and cheerfulness of the salon below. 

Pouchee was decking the mantel-shelf with the violets Marjorie 
should have worn. “ Headstrong as ever, child ! But I forbear to 
reason,” she cried, until you explain yourself. That big Italian 
letter redirected in the seigneur’s hand, has brought you import- 
ant news?” 

^ “ I will answer you to-morrow, Pouchee. All I know is that I 
have lost my chance of distinguished society, and that my heart 
is the happiest heart in all Cambridge.” 

“ Grand ciel! Then you have a dear friend among the Floren- 
tines !” Poor Pouchee’s face brimmed over with curiosity. “I 
accept him without conditions, for your sake. The Italians are 
ungrateful as rats. Think of all my country has done for them ! 
Still, if a Florentine is your fate — ” 

But her imaginary concessions were cut short; the violets 
slipped through Pouchees finger’s. There came the sudden click 
of a latch-key at the house-door. A man’s firm step sounded in 
the passage. 


FROM DIN AW S HAND. 


373 


“It is our gentleman I Save yourself, quick, child ! The cur* 
tains of the bay-window will hide you.” 

The words had scarce left Pouchee’s mouth when Geoff Arbuth- 
not entered. He took a rapid glance round him, walked in the 
direction of the window — Marjorie’s heart thrilled as she crouched, 
imprisoned, out of sight — then stopped short. There was some- 
thing of insecurity about his movements. 

“ For a moment I was afraid to come in. The front door has 
become strange to one. But you are really alone, mademoiselle? 
Your visitor has started to her party? Then you will let me have 
five minutes’ chat beside your fire? I have something good to tell 
you.” 

“ That is right, sir. Please let me set you a chair.” 

In performing this little action, Pouchee artfully chose such a 
point that Marjorie, shadowed herself, might gain a full view of 
Geff Arbuthnot’s face. 

“Your fire makes one feel we are in November.” 

He stretched his hands forth to the blaze. “ How delightful 
your salon is to-night, Mademoiselle Pouchee.” 

Coming in from the mud and darkness, the dreary prose of Cam- 
bridge thoroughfares, he might well think so. The room was 
redolent with the odor of Marjorie’s discarded violets; morsels of 
muslin embroidery, a thimble never worn by Pouchee’s finger, 
lay on a work-table near Geoff’s elbow. The warmth, the grace, 
the nameless sweetness of a young girl’s presence, were every- 
where. 

“ How well that Guernsey photograph looks in its old place!” 
Could it be that Geoffrey shrunk from pronouncing the name of 
Tintajeux? “You shall not dismantle your walls again for whim 
of mine.” 

Pouchee stirred the fire into a keener flame. She gave a dis- 
creet little cough. 

“We will settle about that another day, sir. I wait impatiently 
your news. Something good about yourself, I hope?” 

“ Something very good.” His face brightened. “You know 
our poor patient down in Barnwell?” 

* ‘ Our Irish bargee, O’Halloran, the dingiest character even 
Barnwell can show.” 

“ But whom, when he was at his worst. Mademoiselle Pouchee 
tended like a sister.” 


374 


A GIRTON GIRL. 


“I sat up one or two nights. I helped — because the good-for. 
nothing is of my religion. Our priest advised an act of contrition. 
I had motives.” 

“As I had mine,” said Geoffrey. “Never condescend, made- 
moiselle, to become a motive-monger. Do you think no experi- 
mental zeal mingles with a medical student’s attention to his pau- 
per fellows?” 

“ O’Halloran rewards you, I trust, with gratitude. That, at 
least,” observed Pouchee, with a touch of cynicism, “ would be a 
new experience among ces messieurs of the gutters.” 

“O’Halloran rewards me with gratitude. The bandages were 
off him this afternoon for the first time, as you know. Well, he 
was sitting, propped up in bed, looking at my face with such poor 
remnant of sight as remains to him, when suddenly — * Doctor! 
I’m darned,’ he cried, in his hollow voice, ‘if it be’ant my Yar- 
sit}'- man, after all!” 

“ Modestly spoken! His Varsity man, indeed!” 

“ I should have thought the fever had come back,” said Geff, 
“ if I had not had my finger on his pulse two minutes before. 

‘ Your Varsity man, Mike — what are you talking about?* I asked 
him. ‘ What have you to do with the University or its men?’ ‘ I 
had to do,’ he said, ‘with a Varsity man one accursed November 
night that you must remember, doctor. There was a lot of chaps 
together, rough river chaps — you know the sort, sir — and three or 
four of the Varsity gentlemen come across ’em, down Petty Cury. 
The gentlemen wasn’t of the fighting kind, so far as I can recol- 
lect, but anyways they got into a Town and Gown row — a bad 
one — Doctor, I say’ — the poor fellow put out his big, weak hand 
to me — ‘ I was the leader of the roughs. I struck a foul coward’s 
blow when the gentlemen was fighting honorable and unarmed. 
It was me gave you the devil’s mark you’ll take with you into the 
coffin.” 

“ Scelerat — miserable !” put in Pouchee, between her closed 
teeth. 

“I tried to joke him out of his fancy,” went on Geff Arbuthnot, 
“ but in vain. Mike had seen my face before he struck the blow 
— and afterward. He had never forgotten me. The scar which 
you, mademoiselie, have lamented over, as marring my beauty, 
put my identification beyond doubt. ‘ My Varsity man — my Var- 
sity man,’ he moaned; ‘ I’ve thought of him many a time in the 


FROM DINAH HAND, 


375 


black years since. And now, at last, I’ve found him. Doctor, 
you saved my life — you’ve looked after me when I should have 
died, else, like a dog, on this miserable floor, here — there’s one 
favor more I durstn’t, no, I durstn’t ask of you. Give me your 
hand in token of forgiveness.” 

“And you gave it liim,” cried Poucheo, whose face had turned 
a queer shade of color as she listened. 

“I gave him my hand, and Mike, who I suspect has cared 
neither for God nor man in his life, caught it to his lips. My 
dear mademoiselle, you can guess that it was a good moment. 
To pull one’s patient round, in body, is much. O’Halloran will 
have a human heart in that dark breast of his from to-day 
forth.” 

And having told his story, Geff Arbuthnot rose. With a linger- 
ing look he took in the home-like suggestiveness of the little 
salon, the violets on the mantel shelf, the morsel of embroidery, 
the slender implements of needle-work, on the table. Then he 
bade Mademoiselle Pouchee good-night. Marjorie listened while 
his remembered step ran up the stairs,, listened until she knew by 
the opening and shutting of a distant door that he had gained his 
study. Then she crept forth, uncertain of mien, from her hiding- 
place. 

“Have I committed a dishonorable action? Was there any- 
thing I should not have heard? Oh, mademoiselle,” she went on, 
incoherently, “ is not Geoffrey Arbuthnot the noblest man in the 
whole world?” 

And Marjorie clasped the mantel-shelf, steadying herself there- 
by. She bent down over a cup of violets, hiding the face from 
which she felt all trace of color must have vanished. 

“You look tired, ma mie. The news from Florence has not 
brought back your roses. Now, what shall I get for you?” cried 
Pouchee, stealing a kind arm round the girl’s shoulder. ‘ ‘ Thanks 
to your Italian letter, remember, you have been cheated out of 
dinner.” 

“ I should like some tea,” Marjorie answered, plausibly. “ Tea 
and a plate of tartines, cut after the fashion that only you, dear 
Pouchee, understand.” 

If the flattery were a trick of war to effect the Frenchwoman’s 
absence, I hold that, iu a moment supreme as this, it was pardon- 
able. 


376 


A GIRTON GIRL, 


Off went Pouchee to the kitchen, unsuspecting to the last of the 
love-story in which she had played a part, and Marjorie, her 
heart on fire, awaited her fate. For the first two or three minutes 
all was quiet. Then she heard the impetuous opening of Geof- 
fre}'’ Arbuthuot’s door. Her limbs well-nigh failed her, her 
spirit sunk. Through a few seconds of suspense the past fifteen 
months seemed to unroll themselves, one by one, before her sight. 
At last the salon door opened and closed. Marjorie moved a step 
forward — she held out a hand that trembled violently. A mo- 
ment more and strong arms held her close, her blushes were hid- 
den on Geff Arbuthnot’s breast. 

There was a long space of silence, an interchange of such 
words, such broken attempts at explanation as pen and ink can ill 
put into form. Then Geoffrey led his sweetheart into the broader 
light of lamp and fire. He looked at her tall figure, her altered 
softened face, with wondering eyes. 

“You have grown several inches, Miss Bartrand. You have 
become beautiful. Tell me I am not asleep — dreaming, as I have 
done so often — that I hold your hand. Tell me my good luck is 
real!” 

“Don’t talk of good luck, yet. I have not lost my Bartrand 
temper. Plenty of bad times may be in store for both of us.” 

“And when was this sent to me?” Geoffrey touched his 
breast-pocket, in token that Marjorie’s ribbon and letter lay 
there. “ The address is an enigma. There is a faded look I can- 
not interpret about the handwriting.” 

“ I left the packet fifteen months ago at your hotel in Guern- 
sey.” The girl’s face drooped. “You ought to have had it on 
the day after — after my vile temper drove you away from Tinta- 
jeux. I wrote — one word — as you wished ; I sent you the bit of 
Spanish ribbon for a book-marker. But fortune was against me. 
I forgot that you and 3^our cousin Gaston had the same initial.” 

“ If Gaston had opened a letter wrongly he would have brought 
it to me on the spot.” 

“ There was mistake within mistake — at that time poor Dinah’s 
heart was near to breaking — so she writes me now.” 

“ Dinah ! You have heard from Mrs. Arbuthnot? Let me see 
her explanation.” 

“I will read a passage or two aloud.” Marjorie Bartrand 
drew the Italian letter from her pocket. 


FROM DINAWS HAND. 


377 


^ **1^0. You will let me read every word of it for myself/' 

And Geoffrey Arbutbnot took the letter, unfolded, and read it 
through. 

“ Dinah was tried beyond her strength,” said Marjorie, instinc- 
tively deciphering a pained expression on Geoffrey’s face. “But 
she has no need to feel so contrite. It will make our happiness 
doubly sweet to know it has come to us, in the end, from Dinah’s 
hand.” 

The tone, the generous words, smote Geoffrey to the quick. 

“ Can 3"ou give up everything for me?” he asked her present, 
ly. “ Your dream for years has been Girton. Do you desire 
still to become a Girton student, or — ” 

“I desire that you shall guide me,” was the prompt answer. 
“ I need no other life, no other wisdom, no other ambition than 
yours.” 

A finis commonplace as daylight, reader, old as the foundation 
of the Gogmagog Hills. Gaston’s prediction was verified — Mar- 
jorie Bartrand had proved herself a very woman after all. 




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Prescription is the greatest earthly boon, 
being unequalled as an appetizing cor- 
dial and restorative tonic. It promotes 
digestion and assimilation of food, cures 
nausea, weakness of stomach, indiges- 
tion, bloating and er uctations of gas. 

As a so o tiling and streiigtlien- 
Ing nervine, “ Favorite Prescription ” 
is unequalled and is invaluable in allay- 
ing 'and subduing nervous excitability, 
irritability, exhaustion, prostration, hys- 
teria, spasms and other distressing, nerv- 
ous symptoms commonly attendant upon 
functional and organic disease of the 
womb. It induces refreshing sleep and 
relieves mental anxiety and despond- 
ency. 

Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescrip- 
tion is a legitimate medicine, 

carefully compounded by an experienc- 
ed and skillful physician, and adapted 
to woman’s delicate organization. It is 
purely vegetable in its composition and 


perfectly harmless In Its effects in any 
condition of the system. 

‘‘Favorite Prescription” is a 
positive cure for the most compli- 
cated and obstinate cases of leucorrhea, 
or “ whites,” excessive flowing at month- 
ly periods, painful menstruation, unnat- 
ural suppressions, prolapsus or falling 
of the womb, weak back, “female weak- 
ness,” anteversion, retroversion, bearing- 
down sensations, chronic congestion, in- 
flammation and ulceration of the womb, 
inflammation, pain and tenderness in 
ovaries, accompanied with internal heat. 

In pregnancy, “ Favorite Prescrip- 
tion” is a “mother’s cordial,” relieving 
nausea, weakness of stomach and other 
distressing symptoms common to that 
condition. If its use is kept up in the 
latter months of gestation, it so prepares 
the system for delivery as to greatly 
lessen, and many times almost entirely 
do away with the sufferings of that try- 
ing ordeal. 

‘‘ Favorite Prescription,” wheu 
taken in connection with the use of 
Dr. Pierce’s Golden Medical Discovery, 
and small laxative doses of Dr. Pierce’s 
Purgative Pellets (Little Liver Pills), 
cures Liver, Kidney and Bladder dla 
eases. Their combined use also removes 
blood taints, and abolishes cancerous 
and scrofulous humors from the system. 

Treating the Wrong Disease.— 
Many times women call on their family 
physicians, suffering, as they imagine, 
one from dyspepsia, another from heart 
disease, another from liver or kidney 
disease, another from nervous exhaus- 
tion or prostration, another with pain 
here or there, and in this way they all 
present alike to themselves and their 
easy-going and indifferent, or over-busy 
doctor, separate and distinct diseases, 
for which he. prescribes his pills and 
potions, assuming them to be such, 
when, in reality, they are all only symp^ 
toms caused by some womb disorder. 
The physician, ignorant of the cause of 
suffering, encourages his practice until 
large bills are made. The suffering pa- 
tient gets no better, but probably worse 
by reason of the delay, wrong treatment 
and consequent complications. A prop- 
er medicine, like Dr. Pierce’s Favorite 
Prescription, directed to the cause would 
have entirely removed the disease, there- 
by dispelling all those distressing symp- 
toms, and instituting comfort instead of 
prolonged misery. 

“Favorite Prescription” is the 

only medicine for women sold, by drug- 
gists, under a positive guarantee, 
from the manufacturers, that it will 
give satisfaction in every case, or money 
will be refunded. This guarantee has 
been printed on the bottle-wrapper, and 
faithfully carried out for many years. 
Targe bottles (100 doses) $1.00. or 
six bottles for $5.00. 

Send ten cents in stamps for Dr. 
Pierce’s large, illustrated Treatise (160 
pages) on Diseases of Women. Address, 
World’s Dispensary Medical Associationi 
Jio, 668 MAIN iSTBXET, BUFFALO^ A. K 


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CROSBY’S VITALIZED PHOSPHITES 


For 15 years has been a standard remedy with Physicians treating ments 
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JUN -7 6j 

ST. AUGUSTINE 
FLA. 


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